Public health round-up

Twenty ambulances, 100 cholera kits and other equipment, and 128 000 bags of intravenous fluids were among a 403-tonne WHO shipment that arrived in Yemen last month. But delivering medical supplies to vulnerable people across Yemen is a major logistical challenge in this conflictaffected country with its damaged port infrastructures. In June, outgoing WHO DirectorGeneral Margaret Chan and Executive Director Anthony Lake of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) issued a statement highlighting the rapidly spreading cholera outbreak with more than 200 000 suspected cases, increasing at an average of 5000 a day. “We are now facing the worst cholera outbreak in the world. In just two months, cholera has spread to almost every governorate of this wartorn country. Already more than 1300 people have died – one quarter of them children – and the death toll is expected to rise,” they said. The agencies have been working around the clock to detect and track the spread of disease. Rapid response teams have been going house-to-house to tell families how they can protect themselves by cleaning their hands and by boiling and storing drinking water. “We call on authorities in Yemen to strengthen their internal efforts to stop the outbreak from spreading further. This deadly cholera outbreak is the direct consequence of two years of heavy conflict,” Chan and Lake said. As a result of collapsing health, water and sanitation systems about 14.5 million people have been cut off from regular access to clean water and sanitation leading to the rapid spread of the disease. About 30 000 local health workers, who are working to end the outbreak, have not been paid their salaries for nearly 10 months. “We urge all authorities inside the country to pay these salaries and, above all, we call on all parties to end this devastating conflict,” Chan and Lake said. http://www.who.int/hac/crises/yem/