ROME, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Yemen, the west-Asian country already hobbled by five years of military conflict, could face "catastrophic" food shortages due to supply problems connected to the global coronavirus pandemic, the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Monday.
Even before the coronavirus outbreak emerged, warfare had pushed Yemen to the brink of famine, FAO said.
Now, with the pandemic interrupting food supply systems and foreign aid, the situation has become more severe. Also contributing to the problem is the worldwide economic slowdown, which has sparked a significant drop in remittances from Yemeni nationals living and working outside the country.
"The health system [in Yemen] was already under heavy stress and it will now be overwhelmed if COVID-19 continues to spread," Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, the FAO's assistant director-general and regional representative for the Near East and North Africa said in a statement, adding that the pandemic "will affect the movement of people and the movement of goods."
"The situation could be catastrophic if all the worst-case scenarios come to be," Ahmed said. "The UN is working on avoiding that."
FAO said that nearly 16 million out of 28 million residents of Yemen were classified as "food insecure before the coronavirus pandemic."
FAO's report on Yemen is the latest in a series of reports it has produced to highlight problems of food security in the developing world amid the coronavirus pandemic. Enditem
