A healthcare worker treating an infant in YemenUNICEFYemen, a country ravaged by two years of intense conflict, is experiencing a rapidly spreading cholera epidemic. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, as of Wednesday (June 7) the number of suspected cases of the acute, infectious diarrheal illness has reached 101,820, with 791 deaths. Forty six percent of the reported cases are in children under age 15, and 33 percent of the fatalities have been in people over the age of 60.
“I personally received 180 cases in one day,” Mohammed Zaid, a doctor who works at a hospital in Sana’a, Yemen, tells the Guardian. “People are left lying in the corridors, and in some cases we are having to put six children in one bed.”
Cholera typically spreads through contaminated food and water. Without treatment, people with severe cases can die from dehydration within hours. Though the illness can be effectively treated by rapidly replenishing lost fluids and salts, the ongoing war has devastated Yemen’s health, water, and sanitation systems, making it difficult to deliver aid to patients.
“Two years of war have plunged the country into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and put Yemen at risk of famine,” Sajjad Mohammed Sajid, Oxfam's Yemen ...
