WHO: Yemen needs help to avoid catastrophic malnutrition
Yemen is approaching six years of conflict, described by aid agency Unicef as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis”.
The World Health Organization’s representative to Yemen, Dr Adham Rashad Abdel-Moneim, told BBC World News as well as trying to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, the country was also trying to tackle other communicable and non-communicable diseases.
“We have ongoing outbreaks of cholera, dengue, diphtheria, influenza, malaria, polio – despite the country being free of polio for years now, it is being detected,” he said, adding there was severe under-reporting of coronavirus because people were more worried about the economic crisis they were facing.
Food insecurity in the country was leading to acute malnutrition, which, in turn, was affecting the prevalence of communicable diseases, he said.
