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1,500 People Have Died In Yemen’s Cholera Break: WHO

  • A woman helps her son as he lies on a bed at a cholera treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen, on June 6, 2017.

    A woman helps her son as he lies on a bed at a cholera treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen, on June 6, 2017. | Photo: Reuters

Published 1 July 2017
Opinion

The country is now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world. 

The rapidly‐spreading cholera outbreak in Yemen has claimed 1,500 lives and sickened about 246,000 people since April, the World Health Organization, WHO, said on Saturday. 

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Yemen Continues to Fight Cholera Outbreak as Cases Rise

WHO representative in Yemen Nevio Zagaria said in a news conference in Sanaa on Saturday that the number of suspected cholera cases has multiplied tenfold in the last two months.

Cholera is a bacterial infection which is contracted through contaminated food or water as well as fluids from the infected person.

Two years into the civil war between a Saudi-led coalition against Houthi rebels, Yemen suffered from damaged infrastructure and medicine shortages, making it a perfect breeding ground for the disease. 

The death toll rose from 1,300 as announced two weeks ago by WHO, which put the number of suspected cases at over 200,000 at the time and said that number is growing by 5,000 a day. 

“We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan and UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake in a joint statement. “In just two months, cholera has spread to almost every governorate of this war-torn country.”

Yemen’s youngest and most defenseless are suffering the worst, as children account for close to one quarter of of the total fatalities, according to WHO. 

"We have never seen something so explosive in Yemen," Ahmed Zouiten, WHO's senior emergency adviser for Yemen, told Reuters.

"We are really scaling up very aggressively our response and we hope that those results will start to show very rapidly."

With funding help from the World Bank, the WHO is setting up treatment centers across the country and sending thousands of volunteers to communities to educate families about prevention tactics.

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Saudi Prince Orders $67m Donation to Fight Cholera in Yemen

Saudi Arabia's new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, also authorized a US$66 million donation to support UNICEF and WHO's anti-cholera efforts there.

UNICEF said in a statement that it "welcomes” the contribution and it will “make a great difference to thousands of children at risk of contracting this rapidly spreading disease.” 

Sherin Varkey, a representative for UNICEF in Yemen, said he thinks the only way for the crisis to truly end is for both parties in the conflict to come to a peaceful resolution.

“It is possibly the most difficult thing, but it is the most important thing,” he said.  

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