Saudi bombs kill Yemeni civilians with cholera

This video says about itself:

24 July 2017

More than 600,000 Yemenis could have cholera before the end of the year, the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned.

Nearly 2,000 people have died from the pandemic and 300,000 people are infected.

Al Jazeera’s Sara Khairat reports.

From daily News Line in Britain:

Tuesday, 25 July 2017

YEMEN CHOLERA EPIDEMIC

THE International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has warned that about 600,000 people in war-torn Yemen could contract cholera by December this year, a figure which is almost one in every 45 people in the 27.5-million-strong country.

The ICRC’s news on Sunday came as the relentless bombardment of the impoverished country by Saudi Arabia’s war planes has not only brought Yemen’s health care system to the verge of total collapse but also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.

According to the ICRC’s the highly contagious disease is ‘a direct consequence of a conflict that has devastated civilian infrastructure and brought the whole health system to its knees.’

Both the ICRC and World Health Organisation (WHO) have already announced in recent reports that over 370,000 people across the country had caught cholera and 1,800 others had lost their lives after succumbing to the infectious illness since late April in Yemen’s second cholera outbreak in less than a year.

Caused by ingestion of food or water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, the cholera infection first became an epidemic last October. Since March 2015, Yemen has suffered heavy air strikes by Saudi fighter jets as part of a brutal campaign in an attempt to crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement and reinstall the former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The relentless aerial aggression has put well over half of all health facilities in Yemen in a state of complete or partial shutdown. There are critical shortages in medical staff in over 40 per cent of all districts, according to Yemen’s Health Ministry.

Nearly 3.3 million Yemeni people, including 2.1 million children, are currently suffering from acute malnutrition. The war has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. On Saturday, the International humanitarian agency Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) raised alarm at the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, calling the situation a ‘shame on humanity.’

They added: ‘Sixty per cent of the country is food insecure and over half the population is unable (to access) safe drinking water. Many areas in Yemen are just one step away from a famine situation.’

The US and the UK have been providing most of the military ordnance used by Saudi Arabia in the war. London has sold £3.3 billion worth of weapons since the beginning of Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen in March 2015.

Washington also sealed a multi-billion arms deal with Riyadh when US President Donald Trump made his maiden visit abroad in May. The deal, which is worth $350 billion over 10 years, $110 billion of which will take effect immediately, was hailed by the White House as a significant expansion of the security relationship between the two countries.

To combat cholera in Yemen, one scientist goes back to basics. As epidemic rages on, health care system is close to collapse. By Cassie Martin, 1:00pm, August 7, 2017.

The most likely source of the cholera epidemic in Yemen has been discovered by scientists. Through the use of genomic sequencing, scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Institut Pasteur estimate the strain of cholera causing the current outbreak in Yemen — the worst cholera outbreak in recorded history — came from Eastern Africa and entered Yemen with the migration of people in and out of the region: here.