According to the UN's emergency food and nutrition assessment, an estimated 2.2 million Yemeni children, aged from six months to five years, are acutely malnourished and at risk of diseases and death.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) director of operations, Robert Mardini, has completed an assessment mission to Yemen.
"The country is getting less than 30 per cent of the medicines it needs, it is getting less than 50 per cent of what it needs in terms of food, so clearly the country today is living on its reserve, and day after day the country is getting closer to famine. Life has become unbearable."
In Yemen, a child dies every ten minutes of hunger and disease.
Iolanda Jaquemet, from the ICRC, has described the dire health situation.
"The health system is in a state of meltdown. Less than one out of two medical structures function in Yemen. Less than one third of the medicines that are needed make it into the country. So what our doctors found is that hospital work staff are working without being paid. It is people who need dialysis and cannot get it. It's patients who suffer from diabetes and lack insulin, and so on and so forth. And they found empty shelves in the pharmacies. So, on a daily basis, Yemenis are dying from completely preventable causes.
Two years of conflict between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition, has seen at least 10,000 people killed.
Air strikes occur almost daily, and 19 million people, or nearly two-thirds of the population need emergency aid.
The UN desperately called for pledges, saying it needs the equivalent of nearly $3 billion this year to avert famine in Yemen.
At the end of a conference in Geneva, $1.5 billion had been pledged, including $10 million from Australia.
UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has urged all parties to allow the unimpeded passage of humanitarian aid.
"We have reached 1.1 billion in this pledging conference. Now what absolutely matters is the possibility to make sure that the amount that was raised is translated into effective support to the people of Yemen. That is why at the closing session I said that we basically need now three things: access, access and access."
Mr Guterres says the amount pledged is a strong response.
"And the Yemeni conflict is a rather remote one, if you compare with the Syrian conflict that is all, every day in the media in which people feel there is a very direct link with our global security because of all the connections between that (Syrian) conflict and the global threat of terrorism. If one takes into account that Yemen is a relatively forgotten crisis compared with others, I think that this pledging conference represents a remarkable recognition by the international community of the need to support the Yemeni people."
As for the reason for the situation, the ICRC's Ms Jaquemet says a lack of respect for the law of armed conflict is to blame.
"What we need to see is parties to the conflict actually not targeting civilians, not targeting health infrastructure, or humanitarian workers or medical workers. Respecting the basic infrastructure for civilians, such as water systems, and we need them to allow the goods into the country. If this first step, respect for the law of armed conflict, was actually implemented, we would already see an important alleviation of the current suffering in Yemen."
