Cholera kills 9 in Yemen’s Aden
Bird flu deaths in Indian capital park
ADEN, Oct 24, (Agencies): Yemen’s government announced on Sunday that nine people had died of cholera in second city Aden as the infectious disease spread across the war-torn country.
Ten other people in the southern port city have been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, the health ministry said.
A ministry statement said 190 cases of severe diarrhoea had been admitted to hospitals in Aden, which hosts the government’s temporary headquarters.
The ministry said that around 200 cases of cholera had been reported nationwide.
The United Nations this month announced an outbreak of cholera in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country even before the war broke out.
A Saudi-led coalition began a bombing campaign in March 2015 against pro-Iran rebels who seized the capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemen in a war the United Nations says has killed nearly 6,900 people.
This month, the World Health Organization said it had confirmed 11 cases of cholera in Sanaa.
The WHO warned that the scarcity of drinkable water has worsened hygienic conditions and fuelled a marked increase in cases of severe diarrhoea, in particular among people displaced from their homes in central Yemen.
The UN’s child agency UNICEF said cholera could prove fatal in up to 15 percent of untreated cases.
Also: NEW DELHI: City authorities have closed a sprawling park in the heart of New Delhi after eight birds died of suspected bird flu, days after the city zoo was closed to the public after nine birds died there. New Delhi’s Development Minister Gopal Rai said Friday that eight bird deaths were reported to city authorities on Thursday. These included two more bird deaths in the Delhi Zoo and two dead birds found in the Hauz Khas Deer Park.
City officials said three dead crows were also found in a residential neighborhood near the zoo. Autopsies were planned on all the dead birds.