Tag Archives: Cholera

Rescuers hope to reach more cyclone victims as roads reopen in Mozambique

Aid workers offload maize meal for victims of Cyclone Idai at Siverstream Estates in Chipinge, Zimbabwe, March 24, 2019. REUTERS/Philimon Bulawayo

By Emma Rumney

BEIRA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Rescuers said they would reach hundreds of people on Monday still stranded more than a week after a powerful cyclone struck Mozambique and swathes of southeast Africa, as roads started to reopen.

Cyclone Idai lashed Mozambique’s port city of Beira with winds of up to 170 kph (105 mph) around midnight on March 14, then moved inland to Zimbabwe and Malawi, flattening buildings and killing at least 657 people across the three countries.

An evacuee from Buzi village carries her belongings as she arrives at a displacement center near the airport, after Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

An evacuee from Buzi village carries her belongings as she arrives at a displacement center near the airport, after Cyclone Idai, in Beira, Mozambique, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

“We are more organized now, after the chaos that we’ve had, so we’re delivering food and shelter to more people today,” Mozambique’s Land and Environment Minister Celso Correia told reporters.

Correia said the number of people in makeshift camps had risen by 18,000 to 128,000 since Sunday, most of them in the Beira area.

Communities near Nhamatanda, around 100 km northwest of Beira and where some people haven’t received aid for days, would receive assistance on Monday, he added.

The cyclone and the heavy rains that followed hampered aid efforts and blocked deliveries of food and other essentials from Beira, which is an important gateway to landlocked countries in the region.

The water covering vast tracts of land west of the port has been receding, but the size of the disaster zone makes getting aid to the neediest difficult.

Aid workers distributed maize meal in the Chipinge district of eastern Zimbabwe – one of the areas where the cyclone wrought major destruction – while residents struggled without access to power or piped water.

“We lost all our perishables after Cyclone Idai,” Chipinge resident Kudakwashe Mapungwana said. “Since then we have no electricity at all and women are busy buying charcoal which is very expensive.”

Sebastian Rhodes Stampa, from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said cases of diarrhea in Mozambique were increasing and they were keeping a close watch out for any outbreak of cholera.

“It’s a killer,” Rhodes Stampa said of cholera, naming the infection as one of his biggest concerns, alongside more flooding. But the weather for the next two weeks looked “pretty good” and dam releases were well-controlled, he added.

Correia said the death toll in Mozambique remained roughly unchanged at 447 on Monday. In Zimbabwe the tropical storm has killed at least 154 people, according to the government, while 56 died in Malawi.

(Additional reporting by Stephen Eisenhammer in Beira, and Philimon Bulawayo in Chipinge and MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare; Writing by Alexander Winning; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Andrew Heavens)

Hunger, disease stalk Africa cyclone survivors, U.N. sees 1.7 million affected

Survivors of Cyclone Idai, listen to a volunteer from Mozambique Red Cross, after arriving to an evacuation centre in Beira, Mozambique, March 21, 2019. Denis Onyodi/Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre/Handout via REUTERS

By Emma Rumney

BEIRA, Mozambique (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of people scrambled for shelter, food and water across a swathe of southern Africa on Friday after a cyclone killed hundreds and swept away homes and roads, testing relief efforts for survivors facing a growing risk of cholera.

Cyclone Idai battered Beira, a low-lying port city of 500,000 residents, with strong winds and torrential rains last week, before moving inland to neighboring Zimbabwe, where it flattened homes and flooded communities, and Malawi.

Idai killed 242 people in Mozambique and 259 in Zimbabwe, and numbers were expected to rise, relief agencies said. In Malawi, 56 died in heavy rains before the onset of Idai.

As survivors gathered in informal camps and health officials warned of growing danger from measles and cholera, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said the situation on the ground was critical with no electricity or running water.

“Hundreds of thousands of children need immediate help” she said, estimating 1.7 million people were affected by the storm.

Around 45 km (28 miles) west of Beira, in Guara Guara village, the government set up a makeshift camp for people rescued nearby, with little water and no toilets.

Most people were outside in blazing sun, or on patches of shade cast by trees. At a nearby school, elderly women curled up on their side on the dirt floor, amongst bits of rubble.

“The help is coming, but it’s coming very slowly,” said Esther Zinge, 60, from near the town of Buzi, adding that what did arrive had to be given to children first.

“The conditions are terrible, and more people keep coming.”

On a beach in Beira, where the Red Cross estimated 90 of the city was damaged or destroyed, survivors clutching infants and bags disembarked from rescue boats beside a ship marooned on the sand by the storm, and began receiving Red Cross help.

A man looks on atop his house after Cyclone Idai in Buzi district outside Beira, Mozambique, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

A man looks on atop his house after Cyclone Idai in Buzi district outside Beira, Mozambique, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

“CONDITIONS TERRIBLE”

In Zimbabwe’s Coppa Rusitu Valley, a township in Chimanimani, near the Mozambican border, hundreds of homes were flattened by large rocks and mudslide from a nearby mountain, burying some residents, who never stood a chance as the cyclone unleashed its fury at night when most were sleeping.

Relatives and rescuers were digging through the debris, hoping to find bodies, but some of the rocks were so big they need blasting, a Reuters witness said. Most people lost relatives, workmates or friends in the township, which also housed government workers, including police.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa on Thursday night said he had come face to face with horrific accounts of people grieving the loss of family and friends in Chimanimani.

Some survivors have taken refuge at churches and centers offering temporary shelter as they deal with the trauma of their losses while private citizens, international aid agencies and the government rushed humanitarian aid to affected areas.

Energy Minister Joram Gumbo said the pipeline bringing fuel from Beira had not been affected by the cyclone but the docking terminals at Beira port had been damaged.

He said Zimbabwe had 62 days supply of petrol and 32 days for diesel, which is in short supply and has led to long queues in the capital. In Mutare city, near Mozambique, diesel shortages were worse, according to a Reuters witness.

A girl stops to look as a man walks past carrying luggage on his head after Cyclone Idai in Buzi district outside Beira, Mozambique, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

A girl stops to look as a man walks past carrying luggage on his head after Cyclone Idai in Buzi district outside Beira, Mozambique, March 22, 2019. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko

FEW HELICOPTERS

In Beira, Saviano Abreu of the U.N. humanitarian arm OCHA, said the main problem with getting aid to relief camps outside of Beira is they could be reached only by helicopter, since floods had cut off roads, and helicopters were few.

Large parts of the city lacked running water, but everyone affected was getting 20 liters of water for washing, cooking and drinking.

Briefing his team late on Thursday night, Connor Hartnady, rescue operations task force leader for Rescue South Africa, said Beira residents were becoming fed up with shortages.

“There have been three security incidents today, all food related,” he told his team, without giving further details.

Commenting on Beira, U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said if people were desperate to get aid, that should be treated as part of the community response and not as a security matter.

“These are desperate people,” Laerke said. “I don’t think anybody would blame a desperate mother or father who have children who do not have clean water to drink or food to eat who grab it from wherever they find it in a shop.”

The storm’s rains caused the Buzi and Pungwe rivers, whose mouths are in the Beira area, to burst their banks.

Roads into Beira were cut off by the storm, and most of the city remains without power. The Red Cross has estimated 90 percent of the city was damaged or destroyed in the storm.

(Reporting by Emma Rumney; Additional reporting by MacDonald Dzirutwe in Harare, Philimon Bulawayo in Chimanimani, Zimbabwe,; Editing by Tiisetso Motsoeneng, Raissa Kasolowsky, William Maclean)

As Hodeidah battle grinds on, residents suffer lack of clean water, electricity

A displaced boy from Hodeidah city carries his brother who is affected by monoplegia, at a school where displaced people live, in Sanaa, Yemen June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

By Dahlia Nehme

DUBAI (Reuters) – Residents unable to flee Hodeidah face constant bombardment, lack of clean water and power cuts as an Arab coalition battles to capture Yemen’s main port from Iran-aligned Houthis.

“We hear loud explosions all the time,” Assem Mohammed, a 30-year-old pharmacist, said by telephone.

“We haven’t had water for three days.”

Mohammed, with his wife and six-month-old daughter, are among a dwindling number of residents who have remained in Hawak district, a neighborhood sandwiched between the airport, captured this week by the coalition, and the sea port, the latest target of the military offensive.

Whether through lack of funds or work or personal commitments, some families like Mohammed’s cannot escape.

Drivers transporting fleeing residents out of Hodeidah have more than doubled their fares since the battle began, while the hospital where Mohammed works has threatened employees with dismissal if they are absent for long periods.

“Electricity has also been cut in most of the city since three days, and in some neighborhoods for a week,” he said. He blamed the water shortage on damage to pipes that relief workers say has been caused by the Houthis digging trenches. Houthi officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Since 2015 Hodeidah residents have used privately-owned generators to produce electricity. But this month’s offensive has left them struggling to obtain the necessary diesel oil.

Temperatures during summer in Yemen soar to above 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) in the shade, which along with lack of clean water could help spread disease.

Coalition leaders Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pledged a swift operation to capture the Red Sea port, without entering the city center to minimize civilian casualties and maintain a flow of essential goods.

But its maritime port is a principal entry point for Yemen’s relief supplies, and the United Nations fears heavy fighting will worsen what is already the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis, with 22 million Yemenis dependent on aid and an estimated 8.4 million believed to be on the verge of starvation.

A displaced woman from Hodeidah city carries her sick daughter at a school where displaced people live, in Sanaa, Yemen June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

A displaced woman from Hodeidah city carries her sick daughter at a school where displaced people live, in Sanaa, Yemen June 22, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi

“The level and degree of human suffering is heart-breaking,” Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen said on Thursday. “Of all the things we are worried about, cholera is top of the list.”

“It wouldn’t take much to start an unstoppable outbreak.”

Dozens of displaced families have been relocated to schools in the city, Mohammed Kassem, Hodeidah ICRC system manager, told Reuters as relief workers distributed food bags at one facility.

“We ran away only with the clothes we were wearing,” said one woman while waiting to receive her share.

The coalition says it wants to prevent the Houthis receiving weapons and generating cash from imports, eventually forcing them to start talks on handing over power to the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabu Mansour Hadi.

UN CONCERNED

Grande warned against cholera spreading “with lightning speed” if the water system breaks down and nothing is done to immediately address the situation.

U.N. officials estimate that in a worst-case scenario the fighting could cost up to 250,000 lives, especially if a cholera epidemic occurs in the widely impoverished region.

The Arab coalition intervened in the war in 2015 to roll back Houthi control of Yemen’s main population centers and reinstate its internationally recognized government. Coalition forces retook much of the south before the war, widely seen as a proxy conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, bogged down.

Tens of Hodeidah families have fled the fighting in Hodeidah for safety in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa, while others have headed to Raymah and Wusab, also in Houthi-ruled areas inland.

“They told us there’s an organization where we can register as refugees over here, but God knows,” said Marwan al-Barah, one of those displaced from Hodeidah.

In a Sanaa school, Reuters TV footage showed men who had fled Hodeidah queuing to register their families as displaced, while women sat on the floor in classrooms as their bare-foot children and toddlers played nearby.

(Reporting by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Sami Aboudi, William Maclean)

Yemen’s cholera epidemic likely to intensify in coming months: WHO

FILE PHOTO: A nurse walks by women being treated at a cholera treatment center in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen October 8, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

RIYADH (Reuters) – The World Health Organization warned on Monday that a cholera epidemic in Yemen that killed more than 2,000 people could flare up again in the rainy season.

WHO Deputy Director General for Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama said the number of cholera infections had been in decline in Yemen over the past 20 weeks after it hit the 1 million mark of suspected cases.

“However, the real problem is we’re entering another phase of rainy seasons,” Salama told Reuters on the sidelines of an international aid conference in Riyadh.

“Usually cholera cases increase corresponding to those rainy seasons. So we expect one surge in April, and another potential surge in August.”

A proxy war between Iran-aligned Houthis and the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led alliance, has killed more than 10,000 people since 2015, displaced more than 2 million and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including the health system.

Yemen relies heavily on food imports and is on the brink of famine. The United Nations says more than 22 million of Yemen’s 25 million population need humanitarian assistance, including 11.3 million who are in acute need.

Salama said the country had also had an outbreak of diphtheria, a vaccine-preventable disease that usually affects children and which has largely been eliminated in developed countries.

Both cholera and diphtheria outbreaks are a product of the damage to the health system in the country, he said, adding that less than half of Yemen’s health facilities are fully functioning.

“We’re very concerned we’re going to go from a failing health system to a failed one that’s going to spawn more infectious diseases and more suffering,” Salama said.

However, Salama said that despite more than 2,000 deaths from cholera, the fatality rate has been low, at around 0.2 to 0.3 percent.

The WHO has approval from the government for vaccination campaigns and is working on ensuring all parties to the conflict implement the plan, he added.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Alison Williams)

Yemen set to run out of fuel and vaccine in a month: UNICEF

A boy is being treated at a malnutrition treatment center in Sanaa, Yemen November 4, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – Yemen’s stocks of fuel and vaccines will run out in a month unless a Saudi-led military coalition allows aid into the blockaded port of Hodeidah and Sanaa airport, UNICEF’s representative in the country said on Friday.

Meritxell Relano, speaking by phone to reporters in Geneva, said fuel prices had risen 60 percent and there were urgent concerns about a diphtheria outbreak, as well as food shortages because of the port closure.

“The situation that was already catastrophic is just getting worse,” she said. “The impact of this is unimaginable in terms of health and diseases.”

After two years of civil war, Yemen has 7 million people on the brink of famine and has had 900,000 suspected cholera cases in the past six months.

The number of new cases has fallen consistently for the past eight weeks, according to data from the World Health Organization.

But progress against cholera, which has killed 2,196 people, could be reversed by the blockade, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a regular U.N. briefing in Geneva.

“If the closure is not stopped in the coming days, we may see that the progress is stopped,” Chaib said. “We can see even more cases and more deaths as a result of not being able to get access to people.”

The closure of Hodeidah port prevented a ship setting sail from Djibouti with 250 tonnes of WHO medical supplies on Wednesday. Trauma kits in particular are running short.

“If the hostilities continue and the ports remain closed, we will not be able to perform life-saving surgeries or provide basic healthcare,” Chaib said.

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Andrew Roche)

 

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

MSF says closing most cholera centers in Yemen as epidemic wanes

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is closing most of its 37 cholera treatment centers in Yemen, saying the epidemic appears to have peaked.

Some 884,368 suspected cholera cases have been recorded in the war-torn country in the past six months, including 2,184 deaths, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). The case fatality rate is now 0.25 percent.

“The number of cholera cases reported in MSF treatment centers has significantly decreased since the peak of the outbreak. As a result, the medical organization is closing the majority of its cholera treatment centers or reducing their capacity,” MSF said in a statement late on Monday.

Some 567 new patients sought treatment for suspected cholera at MSF’s centers in nine governorates of Yemen during the second week of October, down from 11,139 at the peak in the third week in June, it said.

“Only 9 percent of patients admitted by MSF last week needed to be hospitalized and a limited number of patients have symptoms that correspond with the cholera case definition (acute watery diarrhea with or without vomiting),” it said. “The remaining cases are believed to be due to other pathogens.”

Ghassan Abou Chaar, MSF head of mission in Yemen, said: “The cholera outbreak is not over but it is no longer our medical priority in Yemen. However, this should not eclipse the dire health situation of millions of Yemenis who are unable to access basic primary healthcare.”

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Yemen’s war pits the armed Houthi movement that controls the capital against the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power.

Cholera epidemics usually subside once the disease passes through a population, but aid agencies say the Yemen epidemic lasted longer and spread wider than they initially expected because of the war’s toll on health care.

U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said on Sunday that an aid effort by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and other agencies had managed to “largely contain the devastating cholera epidemic”, but warned it could flare up again without urgent investment in health, water and sanitation.

ICRC said last month that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year.

Alexandre Faite, head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, said at the time that the “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

“Preventable illnesses and deaths are increasing in Yemen, and this can be partly attributed to the salary crisis,” MSF said, noting that doctors, nurses and other public health workers had not been paid in 13 months.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Peter Graff)

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

Yemen cholera cases could hit 1 million by year-end: Red Cross

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – The humanitarian situation in Yemen is a “catastrophe”, and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday.

Warring parties in Yemen – including the western-backed Saudi-led coalition – are all using disproportionate force, leading to “very excessive” civilian casualties, said Alexandre Faite, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen.

In addition, suspected cases of cholera have reached 750,000, with 2,119 deaths, Faite said, and the Red Cross expects at least 900,000 cases by the end of the year.

“The situation has really evolved in a very dramatic way and I think that it’s nothing short of a catastrophe,” Faite told a news briefing in Geneva.

Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Control of the country is split between the Iran-aligned Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen, including the capital, Sanaa. Opposed to the Houthis are a Saudi-led coalition.

With the main port of Hodeidah damaged, the Red Cross brings medical aid, including insulin, into Yemen with occasional cargo planes to Sanaa. Other goods come by land convoys from Jordan and Oman and by ship from Jordan, Oman and Dubai.

A ship from Karachi with 500 metric tonnes of rice is now due on Oct 7 in Hodeidah, the first ICRC shipment there since early February.

Faite called on all sides to open Sanaa airport to commercial flights for essential aid supplies and to make progress toward allowing the Red Cross to visit prisoners of war.

“I don’t think political settlement is coming soon and I’m very worried that the extension of the conflict would lead to more problems,” Faite said.

“This is why humanitarian aid, access of essential goods should be there,” he said. “There is a bottleneck”.

Although the death rate for cholera victims has dropped to less than 0.3 percent, Faite said Yemen’s “health sector is really on its knees in Yemen … the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid.”

For the first time, the Red Cross is now providing health workers with food parcels, he said.

“In terms of access to even water, electricity, there isn’t a power grid in the main cities in Yemen. Without the ICRC and other organizations fixing (pumping stations) there wouldn’t be any running water in Sanaa,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by John Stonestreet)

Cholera kills four in Kenyan capital since May, government shuts hotels

Cholera patients receive treatment and care inside a special ward at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya

By George Obulutsa

NAIROBI (Reuters) – A cholera outbreak in the Kenyan capital has killed four people since May and the government has shut down a three-star hotel and a popular restaurant there to control its spread, the health minister said on Wednesday.

At least 79 people with confirmed cases of cholera were being treated in various Nairobi hospitals and authorities were setting up 10 more treatment centers to cope with the outbreak, Cleopa Mailu, the minister, told a news conference.

“We have so far closed two hotels … and we shall continue to do so if there is evidence there is risk to the public,” Mailu said, after visiting some of the patients.

The government had ordered the immediate testing of about half a million people in the food handling business in the next 21 days, he said.

Mailu said local authorities in Nairobi would be required to repair all broken sewer lines, ensure all water vendors and their water sources were certified, and ban hawking of food.

“Some of them (measures) will not be pleasant,” he said.

Containing cholera in Nairobi is critical, given it is a major hub, not just in Kenya, but in the region.

Mailu said the Kenya Red Cross and UNICEF were also helping to contain the cholera, a diarrhoeal disease transmitted by infected food and water. It can kill within hours unless treated with intravenous fluids and antibiotics.

Kenya has suffered several waves of cholera since 1971, according to the World Health Organization. An outbreak in March last year killed 216 people with 13,000 hospitalized across the country.

Two ministers, Henry Rotich and Adan Mohamed, sought treatment with cholera-like symptoms after eating food during a government event in the capital last week, local newspapers reported.

Rotich’s ministry of finance said he did not wish to comment. Mohamed, who is industrialization minister, was not available immediately.

(Editing by Duncan Miriri and Richard Balmforth)

U.N. says world needs to know about Yemen, journalists need access

Members of a special security force loyal to the Houthi rebels perform an oath as they take part in a military parade at the Tahrir Square in downtown Sanaa, Yemen July 19, 2017. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

By Michelle Nichols

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations on Wednesday demanded media access to report on the “man-made catastrophe” in Yemen after a Saudi Arabia-led coalition blocked three foreign journalists from traveling on a U.N. aid flight to the Houthi rebel-controlled capital Sanaa.

“Steps like this do not help,” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters in New York. “This has been a large man-made humanitarian problem, the world needs to know and journalists need to have access.”

The coalition, which intervened in the Yemen conflict in 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, controls the airspace over Yemen and can prevent any flights made without prior permission.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is backing Yemen government forces fighting the Iran-allied Houthi rebels, prevented the U.N. flight from departing Djibouti on Tuesday because the journalists were due to travel.

Haq said the U.N. humanitarian air service had been allowed to take off on Wednesday and had landed in Sanaa carrying 26 humanitarian aid workers, but not the three journalists from the British Broadcasting Corporation.

“This partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, is not getting enough attention in international media,” Haq said.

“The lack of coverage is hindering humanitarian workers efforts to draw the attention of the international community and donors to the man-made catastrophe that the country is experiencing,” he said.

Top United Nations officials last week slammed the warring parties in Yemen and their international allies for fueling an unprecedented deadly cholera outbreak, driving millions closer to famine and hindering humanitarian aid access.

Since the end of April, the World Health Organization said there have been more than 320,000 suspected cases of cholera – a disease that causes uncontrollable diarrhea – and 1,742 deaths across more than 90 percent of the Arabian Peninsula country.

Haq said the journalists had been carrying visas from the Yemen government.

A source in the coalition said that the Yemeni government was the only party entitled to issue visas for foreigners and that entry must be made via commercial flights through Aden airport, which is under its control.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Diane Craft)

Yemen’s cholera death toll rises to 1,500: WHO

FILE PHOTO: Women sit with relatives infected with cholera at a hospital in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, Yemen May 14, 2017. REUTERS/Abduljabbar Zeyad

ADEN (Reuters) – The death toll from a major cholera outbreak in Yemen has risen to 1,500, Nevio Zagaria, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) representative in Yemen, said on Saturday, and appealed for more help to put an end to the epidemic.

Yemen has been devastated by a 27-month war between a Saudi-led coalition and the armed Iran-aligned Houthi group, making it a breeding ground for the disease, which spreads by faeces getting into food or water and thrives in places with poor sanitation.

Speaking at a joint news conference with representatives of the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank, Zagaria said that had been some 246,000 suspected cases in the period to June 30.

The WHO said this week that the outbreak had reached the halfway mark at 218,798 cases as a massive emergency response has begun to curb its spread two months into the epidemic.

Although most of Yemen’s health infrastructure has broken down and health workers have not been paid for more than six months, the WHO is paying “incentives” to doctors, nurses, cleaners and paramedics to staff an emergency cholera network.

With funding help from the World Bank, the WHO is setting up treatment centers with 50-60 beds each, overseen by shifts of about 14 staff working around the clock. The aim is to reach 5,000 beds in total.

(Reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf, writing by Sami Aboudi; editing by Jason Neely)