This is the News in Brief from the United Nations.

Ukraine: WHO working day and night to keep medical supply chains open

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that it’s working “day and night” to keep medical aid flowing into Ukraine following Russia’s invasion more than two weeks ago.

The relief effort has continued despite missile attacks on at least two dozen healthcare facilities, workers and patients in Ukrainian cities which have killed 12 people and injured 34.

Another key priority of the WHO relief effort is to provide support to neighbouring countries’ health care systems, amid an ongoing exodus of Ukrainians fleeing the war which is now approaching three million people.

“Supply chains have been severely disrupted,” the UN health agency said in a statement, adding that ‘many distributors are not operational, some stockpiles are inaccessible”, owing to military operations, medicine supplies are running low, and hospitals are struggling to provide care to the sick and wounded .

Some 18 million people in Ukraine are believed to have been affected by the war, including 6.7 million internally displaced.

Chronic and emergency needs have stretched medical facilities to breaking point, with WHO reporting that nurses have had to ventilate patients manually in hospital basements, away from Russian shelling, that has been condemned by the UN rights chief.

Among the most-needed lifesaving supplies, the UN health agency has sourced oxygen and insulin, surgical supplies, anaesthetic and transfusion kits to collect, test and safely transfuse blood.

Chernobyl nuclear reactor latest: power ‘restored’ says UN atomic agency

Staying with Ukraine, electricity has been restored to the stricken Chernobyl nuclear reactor, after power was lost, following the site’s occupation by Russian forces on 24 February.

Announcing the news on Sunday, the UN atomic energy agency, IAEA, said that the plant’s back-up diesel generators could now be turned off.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi explained that there had not been any “critical impact” on safety, as Chernobyl’s spent fuel rods have continued to be cooled by the existing water tanks.

But Mr. Grossi said that he was still “gravely concerned about safety and security at Chernobyl and Ukraine’s other nuclear facilities”.

At the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian control since 4 March, the IAEA chief said that Ukrainian technicians had been joined by Russian representatives, contravening safety directives.

Yemen ‘teetering on outright catastrophe’ warn UN humanitarians

Yemen’s already dire hunger crisis is “teetering on the edge of outright catastrophe”, the UN warned on Monday, as new data analysis indicated potentially record food insecurity there.

Today, more than 17.4 million Yemenis are food insecure; an additional 1.6 million “are expected to fall into emergency levels of hunger” in coming months, taking the total of those with emergency needs, to 7.3 million by the end of the year.

Of extreme concern to humanitarians is the likelihood that the number of people experiencing “catastrophic” – or famine-like - levels of hunger, will increase five-fold, to 161,000, by 31 December.

World Food Programme Executive Director, David Beasley said that “we are almost out of time to avoid” catastrophe. And he added that unless the agency received “substantial” new funding immediately, “mass starvation and famine will follow”.

Daniel Johnson, UN News.