A cholera outbreak in war-ravaged Yemen has killed 315 people since April 27, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday.
The cholera infection is continuing to spread across Yemen with more than 29,300 suspected cases reported in 19 of the country’s 22 provinces, the agency added in a tweet.
The latest tallies come a day after the international charity organisation Doctors without Borders warned that the cholera outbreak could get out of control in Yemen.
Yemen suffers another cholera outbreak
The impoverished country has been devastated by a power struggle between a Saudi-backed government and Iran-aligned rebels since late 2014. Yemen’s ongoing violence has taken a toll on its healthcare centres.
Last week, a state of emergency was declared in the rebel-held capital Sana’a after a large number of cholera cases were detected in the city.
More than half of the country’s medical facilities no longer function, the WHO said. Some 7.6 million people live in Yemen’s cholera-threatened areas, according to UN estimates.
On Friday, the WHO warned that Yemen could have as many as 300,000 cases of cholera within six months and an “extremely high” number of deaths.
“We need to expect something that could go up to 200,000-250,000 cases over the next six months, in addition to the 50,000 cases that have already occurred,” Nevio Zagaria, WHO Yemen representative, told reporters in Geneva.