(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Top United Nations officials yesterday slammed the warring parties in Yemen and their international allies for fuelling an unprecedented deadly cholera outbreak, driving millions closer to famine and hindering humanitarian aid access.
Since the end of April, the World Health Organisation said there have been more than 320,000 suspected cases of cholera — a disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhoea — and 1,742 deaths across more than 90% of the Arabian Peninsula country.
UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council yesterday the toll was likely much higher as aid workers could not reach remote areas of the impoverished, war-torn country.
'This cholera scandal is entirely man-made by the conflicting parties and those beyond Yemen's borders who are leading, supplying, fighting and perpetuating the fear and the fighting, O'Brien said.
He called on the 15-member Council to 'lean much more heavily and effectively on the parties and those outside Yemen to end the conflict and humanitarian crisis.
A Saudi Arabia-led coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war in 2015, backing government forces fighting Houthi rebels.
The country, which relies heavily on imports for food, has become one of the UN's top humanitarian crises.
'Seven million people, including 2.3mn malnourished children — of whom 500,000 are severely malnourished under the age of five — are on the cusp of famine, vulnerable to disease and ultimately at risk of a slow and painful death, he said.
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation Director-General Graziano da Silva said there had already been reports of people dying from hunger in some areas of Yemen and complained about a lack of funding and access. 'We simply cannot act where we are most needed, he told the council.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told the council the outbreak was 'being driven by conflict, the collapse of the basic public services and malnutrition.
He said the WHO and the UN Children's Agency Unicef were supporting more than 600 treatment centres and rehydration points in Yemen and planned to open another 500 centres but there was a shortage of doctors and nurses.
Yemen's economy has collapsed and 30,000 health workers have not been paid for more than 10 months, so the United Nations has stepped in with 'incentive payments to get them to help with the fight against cholera.
UN Yemen mediator Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed told the Security Council a Saudi donation of $67mn had helped slow the cholera spread and called on other donors to step up.
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