Cholera kills 1,869 people in Yemen: WHO

By Ali Owaida

MARIB, Yemen

A total of 1,869 people have been killed by a cholera outbreak in war-torn Yemen since late April, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday.

In a statement, the WHO said 396,086 suspected cases of cholera have been registered in the country since April 27.

The scale of deaths caused by the disease appears to have been decreasing in recent days as only five Yemenis have lost their lives to the virus since Monday.

WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus earlier said that Yemen was witnessing the largest outbreak of the cholera epidemic in the world.

Impoverished Yemen has remained in a state of civil war since 2014, when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

The conflict escalated when Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign in 2015 aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and shoring up Yemen’s embattled government.

According to UN officials, more than 10,000 people have been killed in the war, while more than 11 percent of the country’s population has been displaced as a direct result of the conflict.