Red Cross chief visits Yemen to assess "catastrophic" cholera outbreak

Source: Xinhua| 2017-07-25 04:30:26|Editor: Mu Xuequan
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ADEN, Yemen, July 24 (Xinhua) -- President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Peter Maurer visited Taiz, Yemen on Monday to assess a worsening health crisis caused by rapid spread of cholera.

Maurer told a news conference that the situation in Taiz is "bad and catastrophic" in terms of public health, which requires multiplying the budget to face these hard circumstances, the SABA news agency reported.

He said that the ICRC is implementing several programs in Yemen, where it has the second largest operation in the world, an indicator of the magnitude of the humanitarian hardship.

Maurer said that he came to inspect the enormous damage and impact on local hospitals and personnel as a result of the war.

He added that the ICRC has decided to increase its support of the anti-cholera programs.

Maurer described the cholera outbreak as "man-made humanitarian catastrophe" that is directly caused by the civil war that has devastated the civilian infrastructure and brought the whole health system to its knees.

He called on the warring parties to ease restrictions on delivering humanitarian aid and medical supplies to fight the cholera outbreak and help contain the worsening humanitarian situation there.

Following his visits to Taiz and Aden, Maurer will also visit Sanaa, the capital city controlled by Houthi rebels.

Yahya Alibi, head of the ICRC delegation in the Gulf Cooperation Council, told the Kuwaiti official KUNA news agency on Monday that more than 300,000 people have been infected with cholera, which has spread to 20 of Yemen's 22 governorates.

To make things worse, the infrastructure and hospitals in this war-torn country are unable to accommodate this number of patients, Alibi said.

The ICRC is currently supporting 11 health centers in the worst affected provinces by improving the hygiene and sanitation conditions there, and providing local residents with necessary medical supplies.

Yemen's government, allied with a Saudi Arabia-led Arab military coalition, has for years been battling Iran-backed Shiite Houthi rebels for control of the impoverished country.

Statistics showed that more than 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen's conflict, most of them civilians, since the Saudi-led coalition entered the conflict in 2015.

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