Thursday, May 14, 2020
Press Release
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue warned on Thursday of an outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic as Houthi militias backtracked on a UN call for a ceasefire returned to fighting on a number of fronts of the conflict, affecting the fight against the virus and providing medical services to those affected by Yemen’s poor health services due to the war.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has indicated that the Coronavirus could affect half of Yemen’s population, which has been suffering from the fragility of the health sector as a result of the more than five-year war.
“Yemen’s health system continues to be fragile, weak and severely understaffed, and supplies to combat Corona are largely inadequate,” said the Organisation in a statement issued by its regional office in Yemen.
The international organization warned that the disease has already been transmitted at the community level throughout Yemen without the authorities being able to detect it, and that this could lead to more deadly consequences than many other countries. After weeks of secrecy and the group’s attempt to reduce the risk of a deadly pandemic, the Ministry of Health of the internationally unacknowledged Houthi National Salvation Government announced that 94 people had died of the H1N1 pandemic. Some 20,300 cases occurred in December, with 68 deaths and 2,498 children under the age of five contracting dengue fever in December, including 16 children’s deaths, accounting for 24 of the total deaths in addition to cholera cases.
The Forum for Development and Human Rights Dialogue called on the UN mission in Yemen to act to counter the outbreak of the disease and uncover crimes against humanity committed by Houthi militias against the Yemeni people.
