Alwaght- At least 471 people in Yemen are believed to have been infected with diphtheria, killing one in 10 of them since the outbreak began in mid-August amid ongoing Saudi aggression, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.
Yemen, one of the Arab world’s poorest countries, has been facing a brutal aggression led by its northern neighbor Saudi Arabia since March 2015.
The United Nations calls Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 8 million people on the brink of famine.
Ibb and Al-Hudaydah governorates are the hardest hit by diphtheria, spread through close physical and respiratory contact, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said in response to a query.
“The overall case fatality ratio is 10 percent,” he said, noting that 46 fatalities had been recorded as of Jan. 2.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen has been blocking aid and basic supplies from entering as the war-torn country struggles to cope with the diphtheria outbreak.
In the past four months, doctors across Yemen had recorded at least 380 cases of diphtheria, a bacterial disease that last appeared in the country in 1992.
The spread of diphtheria - which can be prevented by vaccine - compounds widespread hunger and one of the worst cholera outbreaks ever recorded, with more than 1 million cases and 2,227 deaths since April. Nearly 14,000 Yemenis, mostly women, children and the elderly, have been killed since the onset of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign.
Following Saudi-led devastating bombardment of Yemen, the country’s health system has virtually collapsed, with chronic shortages of medical supplies, low immunization rates and most health workers unpaid throughout the war.
