SANAA, Yemen — The World Health Organization says a rapidly spreading cholera outbreak in Yemen has claimed 1,500 lives since April and is suspected of sickening 246,000 people.
The WHO’s representative in Yemen, Dr. Nevio Zagaria, told reporters in Sanaa on Saturday that the number of suspected cases in the country’s second outbreak of cholera in six months has multiplied tenfold in the last two months.
Two weeks ago, the WHO put the death toll at 1,300 and the number of those sickened at 200,000. The organization said that a quarter of those killed by the disease in the war-torn country are children.
A two-year Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels has damaged infrastructure and caused medicine shortages in the Arab world’s poorest country.
— Ahmed Al-Haj
