Yemen Is Suffering from the World’s Worst Cholera Epidemic
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Yemen’s cholera epidemic is the worst in the world:
Yemen, a country ravaged by war and on the brink of famine, is now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world, according to international health authorities.
The outbreak has surpassed 200,000 cases, and that number is growing by 5,000 a day, they say.
Yemen is suffering from multiple humanitarian disasters, and each one contributes to the next: millions are internally displaced, tens of millions are starving or severely malnourished, and hundreds of thousands are becoming ill from preventable and treatable diseases. All of these disasters could have been avoided, all are man-made, and the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led intervention bears significant responsibility for causing all of them. This did not have to happen, and it isn’t happening by chance or some random misfortune. All of this has been deliberately done to Yemen for over two years by wealthy states and their Western patrons. The U.S. has been a chief enabler and supporter of the governments most responsible for causing the disaster now engulfing the people of Yemen.
Despite the fact that it is experiencing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, Yemen remains shockingly neglected by the outside world. The funding needed to provide food and medicine to the starving and the sick is woefully inadequate, and delivering aid is seriously hampered by the coalition blockade and fighting on the ground. Media coverage is minimal when we consider the vast scale and severity of the crisis, and only some of that can be attributed to lack of access to the country. There seems to be no sense of urgency in any of the governments that have helped to wreck and starve Yemen, and because so few people are even aware of their governments’ role in creating the horrific conditions there there is little or no political pressure to force a change in policy. That needs to change quickly to prevent the worst-case scenarios of massive loss of life from starvation and disease.
The original source of this article is The American Conservative