Al-Sabah Al-Yemeni | news agencies |
A high-ranking United Nations delegation has made a rare visit to Yemen, as the impoverished country is grappling with war, a cholera epidemic and looming famine.
The executive directors of the World Health Organization WHO, the UN Children’s Fund UNICEF and the World Food Programme arrived in Yemen on Monday, visiting the southern province of Aden and the country’s capital Sana’a.
The UN representatives declined to elaborate on the visit, however, Yemen’s official Saba news agency said the officials visit came for talks on international humanitarian aid, adding that the visit aimed to contain “the cholera epidemic which has spread to all provinces.”
The visit came a day after the UN warned that two thirds of Yemen’s population was in dire need of humanitarian assistance and the country teetered on the edge of famine.
The WHO and the International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC also raised alarm that cholera outbreak had independently claimed 1,800 lives and infected more than 370,000 others in the war-torn country, with more than 600,000 Yemenis expected to contract cholera by December this year.
The World Food Programme had previously described the situation in Yemen as “the largest humanitarian crisis happening in the world at the moment.”
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