Tue - 02 Apr 2019 - 07:38 PM ،،،
aawsat
A week after being rushed into a public hospital in Houthi-run Sanaa, two Yemeni children in a critical health condition died and their accompanying mother contracted Cholera.
Becoming a twice-bereft mother in her 30s, Um Sahar voices her deep regret of taking her late children to the public hospital, where she said an absence of proper healthcare, poor hygiene, and service carelessness took away her children's lives.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, she credited an unnamed charitable person for her lonesome survival. After being safely transferred to a private hospital for cholera treatment, Um Sahar said that had it not been for the private assistance she would have been “laying cold next to Sahar and Shadi (her two children)”
Riding in the same boat, Abu Saber recounts his suffering in an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, saying that only after securing an influential figure’s support, he managed to find a single bed in a private healthcare center for his wife and daughter.
They, according to Abu Saber, were first admitted to Sanaa’s public hospital but were left a whole day without any treatment, making their condition worse.
With endless cholera-linked tragedies weighing heavily on Sanaa’s poor, hospitals are crammed with cholera patients to the point medics are relying solely on symptoms to diagnose incoming cases as the epidemic spreads.
Sanaa-based medic, Abu Ismail, says that the horrid of depreciating health care conditions and hygiene offered at public hospitals leaves patients desperate to get transferred to a private center.
“Most patients do not trust public healthcare in Sanaa because of negligence and lack of sterilization. Only those who do not have access to treatment in private hospitals will continue to be hospitalized there.”
Contaminated water supplies are the chief culprits in spreading the disease. A chilling picture is painted clear when looking closer to how heavy downpour is working hand in hand with collapsing basic services, an outdated water network, and poor sanitation to contaminate irrigation water going into produce.
An official source in the Houthi-run water and sanitation institution in Sana'a accuses the Iran-backed militia of knowingly exacerbating the cholera outbreak.
“Houthi militias have shut down the sewage treatment plant north of the capital, Sana'a, which is not only ready to go into work, but also could seriously help in reigning in the cholera epidemic,” the source told Asharq Al-Awsat, noting that Houthis are trading in the lives of citizens for “saving the diesel” needed to run the plant.
Medical sources attributed the deterioration of health conditions and the spread of epidemics to the arrogance and indifference exercised in Houthi-run territory.
Apart from the embarrassing management job done in Sanaa, Houthis have also actively blocked humanitarian aid provided by international relief organizations from reaching ailed citizens. Instead, they have actively plundered the aid for later sale on black markets.
Yemen is suffering its third major outbreak of the water-borne bacterial infection since the conflict broke out in 2015, causing the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis that has put 10 million people on the brink of famine. The disease is spreading like “wild-fire”, according to the United Nations which recorded 110,000 suspected cholera cases and 200 deaths in three months.
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