iStock/Thinkstock(SANAA, Yemen) — Yemen is already wracked by a war that has killed more than 10,000 people, but now the country has also been struck by a fast-spreading cholera outbreak.
As of Monday, 184 people in Yemen have died from the disease, while the number of suspected cholera cases has increased to 11,000, up dramatically from just over 2,000 cases two weeks ago, according to Alexandre Faite, head of the delegation at the Red Cross in the country located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.
In the country’s capital of Sanaa, a state of emergency has been declared.
Sanaa has seen a lot of rain recently, which has contributed to the spread of cholera, a water-borne disease. Poor hygiene due to the ongoing conflict is another factor, said Marie Claire Feghali, regional communications manager for the Red Cross.
“The most problematic part is that health facilities in Yemen are quite overstretched due to the conflict,” Feghali told ABC News. “It’s putting too much strain on health facilities that already have a lot of difficulty coping with the situation. In a few months, if you have an outbreak of any kind, it’s just going to be worse.”
Barely 45 percent of Yemen’s health facilities are functioning, and less than 30 percent of the amount of medicine and medical equipment that is needed is entering the country, she said.
Some patients have died on their way to the hospital. The collapse of the war-torn country’s infrastructure and health system means that millions of Yemenis have difficulty accessing health care and patients need to travel longer to get to the nearest hospital.
“The trip to the hospital can be deadly,” Malak Shaher, communications manager for Doctors Without Borders in Yemen, told ABC News. “If you have cholera, you can lose your life if you’re not treated quickly.”
Doctors Without Borders has witnessed at least eight deaths in the outbreak, including two patients who were already dead when they arrived at the treatment center. One of them was an 11-year-old boy who lost his life just 10 minutes before he arrived. “His parents said they weren’t able to find transportation,” Shaher said.
As of yesterday, Doctors Without Borders had treated more than 1,760 patients with cholera and acute diarrhea.
“Every day there are more patients than the previous day,” Shaher said, adding that the outbreak started with a few cases on March 30, then increased to 780 patients by May 9. Since then, the number of patients with cholera and acute diarrhea treated by Doctors Without Borders has more than doubled.
Yemen’s conflict began in late 2014 when Houthi fighters, supported by forces of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, drove their way into Sanaa and, little by little, took over government institutions during the early months of 2015. Interim President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi and his government fled the country. An Arab Sunni coalition led by Saudi Arabia then launched a war to restore Hadi’s government to power — a military campaign that is supported by the U.S. The Saudi-led coalition has been blamed by the United Nations for most of the civilian deaths in the country.
Yemen is one of the world’s poorest countries. The war has made conditions much worse: The United Nations estimates that 18.8 million people in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance. In addition to killing thousands, the war has displaced millions.
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