AMMAN (CNS): The Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD) the Catholic aid agency for England and Wales, and other humanitarian agencies warn that Yemen’s health care system, already ravaged by five years of civil war, is collapsing, while its people risk famine as the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country struggles with the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic.
“Yemen is desperate for peace,” Lise Grande, the United Nations (UN) humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, said of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in which 24 million people have no choice but to depend on international aid.
A donors’ pledging conference on June 2 raised only a little over half of the US$2.41 billion ($18.86 billion) needed to cover essential aid until the year end, leaving a gap of more than a billion dollars ($7.75 billion).
“Humanitarian agencies are running out of money and Covid is spreading. Millions of people who depend on food aid and the health services … to fight cholera and malaria are now hanging by a thread,” Grande said, stressing, “There’s only one answer—the war needs to stop.”
Yemen’s civil war has left more than 100,000 dead and displaced four million people. The UN said nearly 80 per cent of Yemenis need aid with millions homeless, malnourished, or afflicted with cholera and dengue fever.
Josie O’Reilly, emergency response officer for CAFOD said that despite continued fighting and disease, the agency “is still able to respond in Yemen, with an aid partner that cannot be named for security reasons.”
CAFODs partner agency in Yemen said, “Working with CAFOD, emergency cash is given to the most vulnerable families who simply cannot afford to buy food.”
A Yemeni family’s minimum food needs increased “exponentially over the last month, in some places up to 24 per cent” due to widespread inflation from the pandemic’s global economic shock. “Basic foods are fast becoming inaccessible for vulnerable families, as prices continue to increase,” said CAFOD’s partner agency.
“In Abyan, (Yemen’s southern) region where CAFOD supports our work, there are very high numbers of internally displaced people because of the ongoing conflict, but also because of severe flooding in April. To mitigate the risk represented by the movement of people, the government of Yemen has asked for support in creating isolation centres,” the partner agency added.
“The moment we were really worried about is finally here,” Sultana Begum of the Norwegian Refugee Council said, adding, “We’re starting to see the number of (Covid-19) cases in Yemen increasing, accelerating fast and aggressively. This is happening already on top of an immensely terrible humanitarian situation and is only making things worse.”
Begum said many hospitals have shut, while others refused to take patients and staff lack protective gear. “There is a shortage of ICU beds and testing kits. Yemen needs nine million testing kits, and there is just not enough of anything right now, so this is an extremely concerning situation.”
Begum explained, “Some of the most vulnerable at the highest risk of contracting this virus are the displaced living in overcrowded camps without access to water, health care, a lot of services that are very vital at the moment. But many are more worried about starving and going hungry than the threat that COVID-19 presents to them.”
Grande warned that the death toll from Yemen’s pandemic could “exceed the combined toll of war, disease, and hunger over the last five years.” That could be over 230,000 deaths, according to a UN-commissioned report from the University of Denver.
