Country sees largest ever disease outbreak in a single year

Collapsing on sidewalks and constantly vomiting, some of the Yemeni villagers barely make it to the health centre where doctors spread carton sheets in the backyard and use trees to hang bags of IV fluids for patients.

They are part of a stream of hundreds of suspected cholera victims that continues to converge on the centre from the impoverished town of Bani Haydan in Yemen’s northern Hajja province. Just hours after being infected, vomiting and diarrhoea cause severe dehydration that can kill without rapid intervention.

Primitive systems

Yemen’s raging two-year conflict has turned the country into an incubator for lethal cholera. Primitive sanitation and water systems put Yemenis at risk of drinking faeces-contaminated water; wells are dirtied by run-off from rainfall on piles of garbage; farmland is irrigated with broken sewers due to lax oversight and corruption; medical intervention is delayed due to unpaid government employees and half of the country’s health facilities are out of service.

The cholera outbreak in Haiti has killed more than 9,000 people since 2010, but Yemen has seen the largest outbreak of the disease ever recorded in any country in a single year.