Ravaged by Cholera, Yemen Faces 2nd Preventable Scourge: Diphtheria
Nonetheless, he said, "the recent border closings still have seriously impacted W.H.O.’s operations
and our ability to restock," and the organization still lacks even "one dose of diphtheria vaccine for children above 5." Yemen’s diphtheria outbreak comes as the country is still struggling with the world’s worst epidemic of cholera, which can cause potentially fatal dehydration if untreated.
The top relief official of the United Nations, Mark Lowcock, said on Nov. 8
that at least seven million Yemenis could starve because of the Saudi blockade and that unless it were completely rescinded, the country would suffer "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades." Under intense international pressure, the Saudis partly eased the blockade this week.
Poncin said that With the last diphtheria case in Yemen recorded in 1992, and the last outbreak in 1982,
Marc Poncin, the emergency coordinator in Yemen for Doctors Without Borders, said in an email on Friday
that Yemen’s health care system, which has now collapsed, could have once easily prevented and contained the diphtheria outbreak.
Officials at the World Health Organization said Friday
that at least 22 people in Yemen had died of diphtheria and nearly 200 had been sickened since it was detected three months ago.
Earlier Friday in Geneva, Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said
that 1.9 million doses of diphtheria vaccine for children under age 5, and 1,000 doses of diphtheria antitoxins needed to treat infected patients had arrived in Sana, the capital, in recent days.
1, 2017
Diphtheria, a deadly infectious disease once thought to have been largely eradicated, has now joined cholera as
a public-health scourge threatening war-torn Yemen, where a blockade by Saudi Arabia has impeded emergency aid.