UNICEF, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, said it was sending aids aid to Yemen, hoping to beat back the two-month cholera outbreak which has spread to 218,000 people.
Three UNICEF charter planes have delivered 36 tons of lifesaving medical and water purification supplies to Yemen to scale up efforts to combat the world’s worst cholera outbreak.
The supplies included, 750,000 sachets of Oral Rehydration Salt (ORS) enough to treat 10,000 people, 10.5 million water purification tablets and other sanitation items.
“We are in a race against time. Our teams are working with partners not only to provide treatment to the sick and raise awareness among communities, but also to rapidly replenish and distribute supplies and medicines ,” said Dr Sherin Varkey, UNICEF Deputy Representative in Yemen.
“More airlifts of critical supplies will continue in the coming days,” Varkey ADDED.
In just two months, cholera has spread to almost every governorate of Yemen. Already more than 1,300 people have died – one quarter of them children. Civil servants, including doctors, nurses, water engineers and rubbish collectors have not been paid for nearly 10 months.
Yemen has been since March 2015 under a brutal aggression by Saudi-led coalition. Tens of thousands of Yemenis have been injured and martyred in Saudi-led strikes, with the vast majority of them are civilians.
The coalition has been also imposing a blockade on the impoverished country’s ports and airports as a part of his aggression which is aimed at restoring power to fugitive former president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.
Two years of war have killed more than 10,000 people, wounded 45,000 others, and displaced more than 11 percent of the country’s 26 million people.
Source: Agencies
