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Aden / AFP
Yemen’s government announced on Sunday that nine people had died of cholera in second city Aden as the infectious disease spread across the war-torn country.
Ten other people in the southern port city have been diagnosed with the potentially fatal disease which is transmitted through contaminated drinking water and causes acute diarrhoea, the health ministry said.
A ministry statement said 190 cases of severe diarrhoea had been admitted to hospitals in Aden, which hosts the government’s temporary headquarters.
The ministry said that around 200 cases of cholera had been reported nationwide. The United Nations this month announced an outbreak of cholera in Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country even before the war broke out.
This month, the World Health Organization said it had confirmed 11 cases of cholera in Sanaa.
The WHO warned that the scarcity of drinkable water has worsened hygienic conditions and fuelled a marked increase in cases of severe diarrhoea, in particular among people displaced from their homes in central Yemen.
The UN’s child agency UNICEF said cholera could prove fatal in up to 15 percent of untreated cases.
The agency says nearly three million people in Yemen need immediate food aid, while 1.5 million children suffer from malnutrition, including 370,000 with severe malnutrition that weakens their immune systems.
Doctors in Aden said that the WHO and the Emirati Red Crescent have supplied hospitals in the city with medical aid to help treat cholera cases.
The United Arab Emirates is a key member of the Riyadh-led Arab coalition battling the Iran-backed Huthi rebels and their allies.