Cholera Outbreak

Yemen Now Faces 'The Worst Cholera Outbreak In The World,' U.N. Says

June 24, 20173:42 PM ET

Colin Dwyer

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A Yemeni child suspected of having cholera sits outside a makeshift hospital in the capital, Sanaa, earlier this month. World health authorities say that of the more than 1,300 people who have died of the disease, a quarter have been children.

Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

Seized by violence and teetering on the edge of famine, Yemen is grappling with another danger that threatens to outpace them both: cholera.
"We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world," international health authorities said in a statement Saturday.
Anthony Lake, executive director of UNICEF, and Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, say that "more than 1,300 people have died — one quarter of them children — and the death toll is expected to rise."
They suspect that is because Yemen now has upwards of 200,000 cases to grapple with, and that number is growing quickly — by a rate of roughly 5,000 cases a day.
"And geographically, it is expanding," Mohamed El Montassir Hussein, Yemen director for the International Rescue Committee, told NPR's Jason Beaubien earlier this month. "It's not a small area. It's almost the whole country."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/24/534236954/yemen-now-faces-the-worst-cholera-outbreak-in-the-world-u-n-says