Coronavirus: Yemen is overwhelmed and in need of urgent aid, warns Medecins Sans Frontieres
- ‘Yemen finds itself at the back of the queue for vaccines, highlighting again the global vaccine access inequality’, said Raphael Veicht, MSF head of mission in Yemen
- On Tuesday, Yemen’s coronavirus committee urged the government to declare a public health state of emergency amid a surge in infections
Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warned on Saturday that the number of critically ill Covid-19 patients was rising across war-wracked Yemen, urging help from donor countries and specialised groups.
“Medecins Sans Frontieres is seeing a dramatic influx of critically ill Covid-19 patients requiring hospitalisation in Aden, Yemen, and many other parts of the country,” MSF said on Twitter.
“We are urging all medical humanitarian organisations already present in Yemen to rapidly scale up their Covid-19 emergency response,” said Raphael Veicht, MSF head of mission in Yemen.
The southern port city of Aden is Yemen’s de facto capital, where the internationally recognised government is based after being routed from Sanaa in the north by Houthi rebels.
A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in 2015 to shore up the government, and since then the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and displaced millions.
Already an impoverished country, six years of war in Yemen has battered the economy and left its health care system in ruins.
The United Nations calls the situation there the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.