Desperate to halt the cholera crisis afflicting Yemen, Unicef has taken the unusual step of paying the country’s doctors and nurses, who have not received salaries in months.

The regional director for Unicef, Geert Cappelaere, said on Thursday that Yemen’s health workers are crucial to the effort to combat cholera and that they should not be expected to work for free.

Their normal pay has been disrupted by the civil war that has raged since March 2015 between the Saudi-backed government and the country’s Houthi rebels and their allies.

Mr. Cappelaere said Unicef, the United Nations children’s agency, started paying the health workers about four weeks ago. The agency is borrowing the money from an emergency fund to provide medical workers with about 70 percent of what they ordinarily would be paid. The money, which he described as daily stipends, has already amounted to millions of dollars.