About 1,170 people have been killed in war-ravaged Yemen due to Cholera. There are 2,000 suspected cases each day. This estimation has been reported by the World Health Organization on Tuesday. Treatment for cholera is taking place everywhere in Yemen. WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic reported in Geneva about the devastation wrought by the conflict there made coping with the outbreak that much more difficult. "The number of suspected cholera cases is rising", said Jasarevic. "We are talking close to 2,000 suspected cases per day", he warned, which meant that Yemen has been suffering from a very deadly disease called cholera.
Ever since WHO began collecting data on the outbreak on 27 April, there has been more than 1,70,000 suspected registered cholera cases across 20 of Yemen's 21 governorates, Jasarevic said. WHO has warned the citizens of Yemen that a quarter of a million people could fall sick with the disease cholera by the end of the year there. Two-third of the population are already on the brink of being affected.
Cholera is a deadly bacterial infection that can spread through contaminated food or water. The disease is easily treatable, but reining it in conflict-torn Yemen is particularly difficult. Two years of devastating war between the Huthis and government forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab military coalition has killed more than 8,000 people, and wounded 45,000 others.
Cholera has devastated the country’s infrastructure, leaving more than half the country's medical facilities out of service.
"It is difficult in a situation where a country has a health system that is collapsing", Jasarevic said.
The WHO and other UN agencies and aid organisations were trying to scale up their response, he added. WHO has so far provided more than 2,20,000 bags of intravenous fluid, has established 144 diarrhoea treatment centres, 206 oral rehydration therapy corners, and nearly 2,000 beds for the treatment of cholera patients, he said.
There are healthcare workers in Yemen who have not received salaries from months as told by Jasarevic. So, WHO and UNICEF have taken initiatives to pay incentives to some doctors and workers so that they can stop demanding payment from the patients who cannot afford it.
