17.8m people need health support in Yemen, says WHO
Roughly half of all Yemeni children under the age of five are malnourished - a total of 2.4mn, while 17.8mn people in the country require health support, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Tuesday.
“Recent events over the Red Sea and attacks on Yemen, as the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory worsens, can reverse the hard-gained progress for peace and stability,” Arturo Pesigan, WHO’S representative in Yemen, told a UN briefing in Geneva via video link.
“The people of Yemen have lived through deep devastation, hunger, and violence. They deserve a life of peace and progress,” Pesigan said. Noting
that only 51 per cent of health facilities are fully operational in the country, he said regions affected by climbing insecurity were fac
ing ‘the worst health and development challenges’.
The western province of Hodeidah alone hosts 135,000
internally displaced households and 916 camps of internally displaced people, he said, adding that this has worsened socioeconomic concerns facing communities and health facilities.
On endemic diseases, the WHO representative said Yemen is overwhelmed by malaria, dengue, measles, diphtheria, and acute watery diarrhoea, suspected of being cholera.
Since the beginning of 2024, 3,940 cases of acute watery diarrhoea and suspected cholera cases were reported, with 13 associated deaths, Pesigan said, pointing out that Yemen is classified as the ‘world’s largest outbreak of cholera’, with over 2.5mn reported case between 2016 and 2021. He also stressed that the WHO is facing a ‘severe shortage’ of humanitarian support in the country.