Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site, such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences. These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data.

Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collecting feedback, and other third-party features.

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customized advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyze the effectiveness of the ad campaigns.

Cholera grips Yemen

A country hit by war must now also face a deadly disease.

With more than 20 million people reliant on aid, Yemen was already the world’s single largest humanitarian crisis before it fell victim to a deadly cholera outbreak that has now claimed some 2,000 lives.

Share

[feather_share]

AIn Sabeein hospital in Sana’a, Yemen, a father and a mother worry as their son shows more and more symptoms of cholera. Ralph el Hage/ICRC

War in Yemen has forced many, such as this 55-year-old fisherman, into abject poverty. “This shirt I am wearing, I picked it up from the sea,” he says. Ralph el Hage/ICRC

The combination of extreme deprivation, malnutrition, lack of clean water, inadequate sanitation and no garbage disposal (such as that seen in the city of Taiz) are some of the drivers. Ali al Kawkabani/ICRC

ICRC engineers work with the staff from local water boards to keep the water flowing. Khalid al-Saeed

The Yemen Red Crescent Society, meanwhile, works on a number of fronts to prevent and respond to cholera. Below, ICRC staff and Yemen Red Crescent volunteers take part in a cleaning campaign to combat cholera inside a detention centre. Fareed al-Homaid/ICRC.

Related

What happens when machines can decide who to kill?

It’s the stuff of science fiction: machines that make decisions about who and when to kill. Referred to as “autonomous weapons”, they’re already in use to some degree. But as more sophisticated systems are being developed we wanted to an expert in the field about whether such systems comply with international humanitarian law and what it means for humanity to give machines the power over human life and death.

‘Wildfire diaries’ and radical change in communications

In this episode, we talk with humanitarian communicator Kathy Mueller who produced our first magazine podcast series, The Wildfire Diaries, about massive wildfires in Northern Canada in 2017. We talk about that series, her many international missions, and the big changes in humanitarian communications since she began with the Canadian Red Cross almost 20 years ago.

The power of storytelling

In this episode, we talk about the power of storytelling to inform and inspire. “Storytelling is a fundamental aspect of human communication,” says our guest Prodip, a volunteer and multi-media storyteller for the Bangladesh Red Crescent. “It inspires us to be a hero of our own community.” We also speak with one such community hero, Dalal al-Taji, a longtime volunteer and advocate for inclusion of people with disabilities in emergencies response. “In disasters. persons with disabilities sometimes get forgotten.”

This post is also available in:

Discover more stories

Get stories worth sharing delivered to your inbox

Want to stay up to date?

This might interest you...

So close, yet so far

Clairet Mata is in a new country raising her son on her own. She says learning how to manage her feelings has been an important way of dealing with separation from her family.

Check it out