To read the graphs better I would click on word button (LInk) two lines down if you can:
begin quote from:
SANA,
Yemen – After two and a half years of war, little is functioning in
Yemen. Repeated bombings have crippled bridges, hospitals and factories.
Many doctors and civil servants …
Oman
Saudi Arabia
Sparsely
populated
areas
HADRAMAWT
Region
Al Ghaydah
Yemen
Sana
Marib
Al Mukalla
Zabid
Rida
Cholera cases per 10,000 people
Taiz
0
100
200
300
Aden
Source: World Health Organization
SANA, Yemen – After two and a half years of war, little is functioning in Yemen.
Repeated bombings have crippled bridges,
hospitals and factories. Many doctors and civil servants have gone
unpaid for more than a year. Malnutrition and poor sanitation have made
the Middle Eastern country vulnerable to diseases that most of the world
has confined to the history books.
In just three months, cholera has killed nearly
2,000 people and infected more than a half million, one of the world’s
largest outbreaks in the past 50 years.
Yemen
542,000
Haiti
340,000
Peru
323,000
Cholera cases by year
Global total
1970
1980
1991
2000
2011
2015
2017
Global data for 2016 and 2017 unavailable | Source: World Health Organization
“It’s a slow death,” said Yakoub al-Jayefi, a
Yemeni soldier who has not collected a salary in eight months, and whose
6-year-old daughter, Shaima, was being treated for malnutrition at a
clinic in the Yemeni capital, Sana.
Since the family’s savings ran out, they had
lived mostly off milk and yogurt from neighbors. But that was not enough
to keep his daughter healthy, and her skin went pale as she grew thin.
Like more than half of Yemenis, the family did
not have immediate access to a working medical center, so Mr. Jayefi
borrowed money from friends and relatives to take his daughter to the
capital.
“We’re just waiting for doom or for a breakthrough from heaven,” he said.
How did a country in a region with such great wealth fall so far and so fast into crisis?
A Nation Split in Two
A woman with her cholera-infected child at a hospital in Sana.
Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency
Yemen has long been the Arab world’s poorest
country and suffered from frequent local armed conflicts. The most
recent trouble started in 2014, when the Houthis, rebels from the north,
allied with parts of the Yemeni military and stormed the capital,
forcing the internationally recognized government into exile.
Saudi-led coalition presence
Houthi-Saleh
presence
Sparsely
populated
areas
Saada
Areas where Al-Qaeda operates
Saywun
Yemen
Sana
Marib
Areas where ISIS has claimed attacks
Al Mukalla
Areas where Al-Qaeda operates
Taiz
Houthi-Saleh presence
Saudi-led coalition presence
Areas where ISIS has claimed attacks
Aden
Source: The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project
In March 2015, Saudi Arabia and a coalition of
Arab nations launched a military campaign aimed at pushing back the
Houthis and restoring the government.
The campaign has so far failed to do so, and the
country remains split between Houthi-controlled territory in the west
and land controlled by the government and its Arab backers in the south
and east.
A Collapsed State
Many coalition airstrikes have killed and wounded civilians, including strikes on Wednesday
around the capital. The bombings have also heavily damaged Yemen’s
infrastructure, including a crucial seaport and important bridges as
well as hospitals, sewage facilities and civilian factories.
The Saudi-led coalition bombed a group of factories outside of Sana, Yemen.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
Services that Yemenis have depended on are gone, and the destruction has undermined the country's already weak economy. It has also made it harder for humanitarian organizations to bring in and distribute aid.
The Saudi-led coalition has also kept Sana’s
international airport closed to civilian air traffic for more than a
year, meaning that merchants cannot fly goods in, and sick and wounded
Yemenis cannot fly abroad for treatment. Many of them have died.
Neither of Yemen’s two competing administrations
has paid regular salaries to many civil servants in over a year,
impoverishing their families as there is little other work to be found.
Among those affected are professionals whose work is essential to
dealing with the crisis, like doctors, nurses and sewage system
technicians, leading to the near collapse of their sectors.
The Devastation of Cholera
Damage from the war has turned Yemen into a
fertile environment for cholera, a bacterial infection spread by water
contaminated with feces. As garbage has piled up and sewage systems have
failed, more Yemenis are relying on easily polluted wells for drinking
water. Heavy rains since April accelerated the wells’ contamination.
Sewage systems failed during the rainy season, sparking the current cholera crisis.
45,000
cases
Yemen
40,000
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
Countries with cholera or cholera-like infections.
January
April
May
July
As of July 30, 2017 | Source: World Health Organization
In developed countries, cholera is not
life-threatening and can be easily treated, with antibiotics if severe.
But in Yemen, rampant malnutrition has made many people, particularly
children, especially vulnerable to the disease.
“With the malnutrition we have among children,
if they get diarrhea, they are not going to get better,” said Meritxell
Relano, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Yemen.
Outside a cholera clinic in Sana, Muhammad Nasir
was waiting for news about his 6-month-old son, Waleed, who had the
disease. A poor agricultural laborer, Mr. Nasir had borrowed money to
take his son to the hospital but did not have enough to return home even
if the baby recovered. “My situation is bad,” he said.
Five tents had been erected in the backyard of
the cholera ward to cope with the sudden increase in patients. All day,
families brought sick relatives. Most were elderly, or children carried
on their parents’ backs.
A girl drinking water from a well thought to be contaminated with cholera in Sana.
Hani Mohammed/Associated Press
If infection numbers continue to rise,
researchers fear that the cases could ultimately rival the largest
outbreak, in Haiti, which infected at least 750,000 people after a
devastating earthquake in 2010.
Aid organizations say they cannot replace the
services that the government is supposed to provide. That means there is
little chance for significant improvements unless the war ends.
“We are almost in the third year of the war and
nothing is getting better,” said Ms. Relano of Unicef. “There are limits
to what we can do in such a collapsed state.”
The United Nations has called the situation the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with more than 10 million people who require immediate assistance. And the situation could become even worse.
Peter Salama, the executive director of the
World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, warned that as
the state fails, “the manifestation of that now is cholera, but there
could be in the future other epidemics that Yemen could be at the center
of.”
International Involvement
There appears to be no end in sight for the
conflict. Peace talks brokered by the United Nations have stalled, and
none of the warring parties have indicated much willingness to back
down. The Houthis and their allies firmly control the capital, and Saudi
leaders have said they will keep fighting until the other side gives in.
The United Nations says that Yemen needs $2.3
billion in humanitarian aid this year, but that only 41 percent of that
amount has been received. The warring parties are among the greatest aid
donors, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates both giving significant sums.
But critics note that the countries spend much more on the war effort
and that their closing of Sana’s airport has been devastating for
civilians.
Unmet funding requirements
1.4
billion
608
669
Humanitarian aid to Yemen
In millions
Funding received
310
1.0
billion
238
932
964
259
98
65
396
358
326
194
121
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
As of August 23, 2017 | Source: The Financial Tracking Service
The United States is also a major donor, as well
as a primary supplier of arms to the members of the Saudi-led
coalition. Although the United States is not directly involved in the
conflict, it has provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition,
and Yemenis have often found the remnants of American-made munitions in
the ruins left by deadly airstrikes.
A camp for displaced Yemenis in Hajjah Province.
Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
None of this bodes well for civilians.
“The war still haunts us from all directions,”
said Saleh al-Khawlani, who fled his home in northern Yemen with his
wife and six children after the Saudi-led coalition began its bombings.
They then fled again, to Sana, after an airstrike hit the camp where
they had sought shelter, and killed a number of his relatives.
They lived on the street for a while and had to beg for most of their food.
“Most of the time, we had only lunch and
sometimes we don’t,” he said. “If we have lunch at noon, we don’t have
dinner at night.”
Sources: Yemen Ministry of Health, World Health Organization, The Financial Tracking Service and The American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project
Shuaib Almosawa reported from Sana, Ben Hubbard from Beirut, Lebanon, and Troy Griggs from New York.Additional work by Jasmine C. Lee
No comments:
Post a Comment