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CAIRO – A haunted look in the eyes of Amal Hussain, a 7-year-old emaciated girl lying silently on a hospital bed in northern Yemen, seemed to sum up the terrible circumstances in which her country torn apart by the war.
A burning portrait of the hungry girl published in the New York Times last week has elicited a passionate response from readers. They expressed sorrow of love. They offered money for his family. They wrote to ask if she was better.
On Thursday, Amal's family said she died in a ragged refugee camp six kilometers from the hospital.
"My heart is broken," said his mother, Mariam Ali, who cried during a phone interview. "Amal was always smiling. Now, I'm worried about my other children. "
The human cost of the war in Yemen, led by Saudi Arabia, has been placed at the top of the global agenda as the outcry over the assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi has prompted Western leaders to reconsider their support for the war.
In recent days, the United States and Britain, Saudi Arabia's largest arms suppliers, have called for a ceasefire in Yemen. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said it should come into effect within 30 days. "We need to move towards a peace effort here, and we can not say we will do it in the future," Mattis said on Tuesday.
Fascinating images of Yemenis suffering from malnutrition, such as Amal – one of the 1.8 million severely malnourished children in Yemen – have given a human face to the fear that a catastrophic famine caused by the Man can invade the country in the next few months.
The United Nations warns that the number of Yemenis who rely on emergency rations, eight million, could soon reach 14 million. This is about half of the Yemeni population.
Humanitarian workers and political leaders are now calling for the cessation of hostilities, as well as urgent measures to revive Yemen's distressed economy, where soaring food prices have pushed millions of people into poverty. edge of the chasm.
During a trip to Yemen to see the toll of the war, we found Amal in a health center in Aslam, 90 miles northwest of the capital Sana. She was lying on a bed with her mother. The nurses fed her milk every two hours, but she vomited regularly and suffered from diarrhea.
Dr. Mekkia Mahdi, the doctor in charge, sat next to his bed and stroked his hair. She pulled on the flabby skin of Amal's stick arms. "Look," she said. "No meat, only bones.
Amal's mother was also sick, recovering from a dengue fever she had probably contracted with mosquitoes breeding in the stagnant water of their camp.
The Saudi airstrikes forced the Amal family to flee their home in the mountains three years earlier. The family was originally from Saada, a border province with Saudi Arabia, which has suffered at least 18,000 air strikes in Yemen and led by Saudis since 2015. Saada is also the homeland of the Houthi rebels who control the north of the country. Yemen. by the Saudi Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, as the proxy for rival Iran.
The geopolitics of war, however, seemed far away in the stifled hunger halls at Aslam.
Amal means "hope" in Arabic and some readers have expressed the hope that the graphic image of his distress could help draw attention to a war in which tens of thousands of civilians are died of violence, hunger or disease. Last year, Yemen experienced the largest epidemic of cholera in modern times, with more than one million cases.
Amal left the hospital in Aslam last week, still sick. But doctors had to make room for new patients, Dr. Mahdi said. "He was a displaced child with illness and displacement," she said. "We have a lot of other cases like her."
The family brought Amal back to her home in a hut made of straw and plastic sheeting at a camp where relief agencies provide help, including sugar and rice. But it was not enough to save Amal.
Her condition has deteriorated, with frequent episodes of vomiting and diarrhea, her mother said. On October 26, three days after leaving the hospital, she passed away.
Dr. Mahdi had urged Amal's mother to take the child to a Doctors without Borders hospital in Abs, about 15 km away.
But the family was broke. Fuel prices have risen by about 50 percent in the past year as part of a broader economic meltdown, prompting many families, even the shortest ones, to save lives.
"I did not have money to take her to the hospital," Ms. Ali said. "So I took her home."
