Saudi crown prince donates $66 mn to fight Yemen cholera

DUBAI, June 24, (Agencies): Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has donated $66.7 million to combat a cholera epidemic in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is fighting in a war blamed for causing a humanitarian disaster.

The donation by Prince Mohammed bin Salman went to the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Health Organisation (WHO), as requested by the organisations, a statement by the Saudi ministry of culture and information said.

It would help them “respond effectively to the cholera situation in Yemen, through a combination of water, sanitation and healthcare activities”, it said.

The number of suspected cases of the disease, which is caused by the contamination of water or food by faeces, reached 179,548 by June 20, with 1,205 deaths, according to the WHO.

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O’Brien has described the cholera outbreak as a “man-made catastrophe” caused by the warring sides in Yemen’s civil war and their international backers.

The country has suffered an economic collapse in two years of fighting which has left 19 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced more than 3 million and ruined much of its infrastructure.

As defence minister, Prince Mohammed is regarded by diplomats and analysts as a prime mover behind the Saudi decision to take military action in Yemen.

The exiled Yemeni government of President Abad-Rabboo Mansour Hadi, backed by the Saudi-led coalition, is trying to roll back gains made by the Iranaligned Houthi group which controls most of northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa.

A cholera outbreak in war-ravaged Yemen will probably have infected more than 300,000 people by September, up sharply from the current tally of nearly 193,000 cases, the United Nations said Friday.

“Probably at the end of August we will reach 300,000” cases, UN children’s agency (UNICEF) spokeswoman Meritxell Relano told reporters in Geneva during a conference call.

Since the outbreak was declared in April, an estimated 1,265 people have died, she said.

“The number of cases continue to increase,” Relano said, adding that all of the 21 governorates in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, have been affected.

She said children had been hit hard by the outbreak, accounting for half of the registered cases to date. But only a quarter of the people who have died so far were children.

Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection spread through contaminated food or water.

Although the disease is easily treatable, doing so in conflict-torn Yemen has proved particularly difficult.