WHO: 70,000 people killed, injured in Yemen’s civil war

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday that nearly 70,000 men, women and children in Yemen have lost their lives or been seriously injured as a result of the conflict there.

The organisation noted in its report that as many as 156 attacks have been documented on health facilities and health-care workers during the war, without specifying who perpetrated the attacks.

The report said 76,137 suspected cases of cholera had been reported since the beginning of the year to the end of October, including 991 deaths as a result of the disease, while there have been a total of 25,242 dengue cases, including 104 deaths related to the disease.

The organisation noted that only 50 per cent of the health facilities are operating in Yemen amid a severe shortage of medicines, equipment and staff.

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The report revealed that there are 35,000 cancer patients in Yemen, ten per cent of them are children, in addition to 7,000 patients with kidney failure who need weekly dialysis sessions.

The WHO’s figures are far less than those issued by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data database project which in early November revealed that 100,000 people had been killed in the Yemen unrest, including over 12,000 civilians killed in “direct attacks”.

Impoverished Yemen has remained in a state of civil war since 2014, when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and shoring up Yemen’s embattled government.