Cholera cases surge in Yemen as conflict intensifies, WHO says

Yemen has reported 8,034 suspected cases and 27 deaths this year, with a quarter of cases from the last four weeks. Save Share Suspected cholera cases in Yemen have tripled in the past three weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) warns, as civilians continue to escape renewed fighting and seek safety in unsanitary camps. Ramped up combat, which has pushed more than200,000people to flee their homes, the WHO said in a report on Tuesday, driving suspected cases from 217 in the week of September 6-12 to 647 in the week of September 27 to October 3. “Families fleeing conflict are now facing another threat from diseases that can be prevented and treated,” said Annette Heinzelmann, the UN agency’s emergency director for the region. “Without urgent funding and unimpeded access to safe water, vaccination and essential health services, outbreaks could spread rapidly among already vulnerable communities.” This year, the global health watchdog said, Yemen had reported 8,034 suspected cases and 27 deaths, with a quarter of the suspected cases occurring in the last four weeks. Five governorates hosting large numbers of displaced people in the southwest – Abyan, Lahij, al-Dhalea, Taiz and Aden – account for 92 percent of reported cases, they reported. The disease has also reached remote displacement camps in Hadramout in the country’s east that are particularly difficult for medical teams to access. Cholera has ebbed and flowedfor yearsas the conflict inYemenhas continued. In 2024, the WHOwarnedthat the country was facing the “highest burden” of a global cholera outbreak. In 2017, awaveof the diseaseinfectedhundreds of thousands and killed at least 2,000. Yemen was alreadysufferingone of the “world’s worst humanitariancrises” and has seen anescalationof food insecurity and disease since fightingreignitedbetween the Houthis and the government in July, shattering four years of fragile calm. Cholera is an acute intestinal infection that spreads through food and water contaminated with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, often from faeces. It causes severe diarrhoea, vomiting and muscle cramps. Contracting the illness can be deadly when not treated with oral rehydration or antibiotics for more severe cases. The Geneva-based WHO said it had only secured $3.78m of the $31m needed for its 90-day emergency response in Yemen....