{"id":3903,"date":"2017-08-15T14:37:36","date_gmt":"2017-08-15T14:37:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/?p=3903"},"modified":"2017-08-16T15:29:56","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T15:29:56","slug":"cholera-death-by-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/2017\/08\/cholera-death-by-numbers.html","title":{"rendered":"Cholera in Yemen: Death by numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced that the number of suspected cholera cases in war-battered Yemen this year hit the half a million mark.<\/p>\n

According to the same report, released this week, around 2,000 people died since April’s outbreak. The international organisation says that the\u00a0deadly waterborne disease infects an estimated 5,000 people per day, and is still spreading fast.<\/p>\n

Yemen\u2019s healthcare system was already acutely under-developed<\/a> before the country was plunged into the current conflict, with barely enough doctors and hospital beds to meet national demand.<\/p>\n

Now with the country’s\u00a0ailing health infrastructure nearly destroyed, around 15 million people are unable to get basic healthcare, according to the new WHO report which deems Yemen’s cholera epidemic “the largest in the world”.<\/p>\n

Compounding the problem is\u00a0the country’s\u00a0water shortages<\/a>, which overall increased the risk of disease outbreak, especially in the countryside, and among children. Around 20 million Yemenis are struggling to get access to clean water. And diseases like diarrhoea, pneumonia, and malnutrition have become common as a result.<\/p>\n

Yemen has already been water-stressed, with only 86 cubic metres of renewable water sources available per person per annum, according to the World Bank \u2013 far lower than the global average of 1,385 cubic metres per capita.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you imagine a hospital without water? It is a desperate situation,\u201d Marie Claire Feghali, spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Yemen, had told<\/a>\u00a0Nature Middle East<\/em>.<\/p>\n

“To save lives in Yemen today we must support the health system, especially the health workers,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General, says. “The people of Yemen cannot bear it much longer.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has announced that the number of suspected cholera cases in war-battered Yemen this year hit the half a million mark.  Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37911,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37911"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/houseofwisdom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}