Cholera is believed to have infected more than 500,000 people in Yemen and killed nearly 2,000 since late April, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Monday (August 14th).
According to a WHO overview, 503,484 suspected cases and 1,975 deaths are attributable to the outbreak that erupted less than four months ago in Yemen, AFP reported.
More than a quarter of the deaths and over 41% of all suspected cases are children, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
WHO said the speed at which the disease was spreading had slowed significantly since early July, but warned it was still infecting an estimated 5,000 each day.
WHO warned the disease had spread rapidly due to deteriorating hygiene and sanitation conditions, with millions cut off from clean water across the country.
"Yemen's health workers are operating in impossible conditions," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
"Thousands of people are sick, but there are not enough hospitals, not enough medicines, not enough clean water," he said, adding that many of the doctors and nurses needed to rein in the outbreak had not been paid for nearly a year.
WHO said that it and its partners were "working around the clock" to support the national efforts to halt the outbreak, adding that more than 99% of people who contract cholera in Yemen can survive if they can access health services.
