'Double disaster' in Yemen as funding runs dry during COVID-19 outbreak
In Yemen, where the health care system is dangerously overstretched and aid cuts threaten what remains, health care workers warn the country's battle against the novel coronavirus is only beginning.
As life returns to a new normal throughout much of the world, health care workers in Yemen fear their war with the novel coronavirus has only just begun.
“The introduction of this virus in the current situation will be catastrophic,” Dr. Ilan Abdul Haq, a health official in the Taiz governorate, told Al-Monitor. “The health system has totally collapsed.”
For more than half a decade, Yemen has been embroiled in a conflict pitting the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels against a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition fighting to restore Yemen’s internationally recognized government. The bitter civil war has left Yemen’s health care system dangerously overstretched and 80% of the population reliant on some form of humanitarian assistance.
As if the situation weren’t dire enough, the United Nations is now warning dozens of its major aid programs throughout the country will begin closing down unless urgent funding needs are met. At least $2 billion is required to sustain essential programming through December, the UN said.
