Yemen cholera cases reach one million
SANAA: The number of suspected cholera cases in war-torn Yemen has reached one million, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
“Yemen suspected cholera cases has reached the threshold of one million, amplifying the suffering of the country caught up in a brutal war,” the ICRC said on its Yemen Twitter account.
The World Health Organization warned in November that some 2,200 people have already died from the waterborne disease, which has propagated rapidly due to deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions.
Marc Poncin, the emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Yemen, said that cholera mortality rates had been on a downtrend in recent months but that the disease was far from vanquished.
“The vibrio is a very resistant bacteria that can survive in water for a very long period of time,” Poncin said, warning that next year’s rainy season could bring an uptick.
“As soon as there is a favourable situation for its increase then it’s there,” he added.
Another, UN agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said almost 80 per cent of Yemeni people need urgent humanitarian aid.
The report, presented in Cairo, stressed that Yemen was suffering the worst famine in the Middle East and North Africa.
FAO added that almost a quarter of the Yemeni people were suffering severe food insecurity while 36 per cent of the population faced moderated food insecurity, Efe news reported.
The severe malnutrition index between children under five years of age reached 11 per cent but surpassed 15 per cent in at least four Yemeni provinces. The FAO regarded this situation as critical.
The conflict in Yemen erupted in late 2014 when the rebels gained control of the capital Sanaa and much of Yemen’s northern provinces.
In another regional issue, the FAO stated that war-torn Syria needed between $11-17 billion to recover garden patches and its agricultural infrastructures.
The report added that food production reached some of the lowest levels in Syria prompting problems in supplying near half of the population in Syria with food. — Agencies