Paris-based NGO opens cholera treatment center in Yemen

SANAA

Doctors without Borders (Médecins sans Frontières) has opened a new cholera treatment center in southwestern Yemen’s rebel-held Taiz province, according to the Paris-based NGO.

“In addition to 5 cholera treatment centers (CTCs) across Yemen, MSF has opened a CTC in Taiz,” the NGO tweeted Monday.

The new center, it added, has the capacity to treat up to 150 people and has already admitted 30 suspected cholera cases.

According to UN figures, at least 570 people in Yemen have succumbed to the disease this year alone.

A bacterial disease, cholera can be fatal if not treated immediately.

For the past five years, impoverished Yemen has been wracked by conflict between the Houthi rebel group and a Saudi-led military coalition.

The violence has left much of the country’s infrastructure -- including water and sanitation systems -- in ruins, prompting the UN to describe the situation there as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times”.