SANAA (Dispatches) – The cholera epidemic in Yemen, which is the subject of a Saudi Arabian war and total embargo, is the largest recorded in modern history, the Oxfam charity group says.
The international charity organization said on Friday that more than 360,000 suspected cases of cholera had been sighted in a three-month period, topping Haiti’s 340,000 after an earthquake in 2011.
"It is quite frankly staggering that in just three months more people in Yemen have contracted cholera than any country has suffered in a single year since modern records began,” said Nigel Timmins, Oxfam’s humanitarian director.
Since its outbreak in Yemen in April this year, 2,000 people have died from the disease, according to Oxfam.
"This is a massive crisis needing a massive response… So far, funding from government donors to pay for the aid effort has been lackluster at best, less than half of what is needed,” he added.
Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a deadly war on Yemen since March 2015 and has also laid siege to the already-impoverished country, has been largely blamed for the cholera epidemic.
Just earlier this month, the United Nations said the "cholera scandal is entirely man-made.”
Saudi Arabia launched the invasion of Yemen in an attempt to reinstate a Saudi-friendly former president who had resigned. Riyadh also aimed to eliminate a popular Yemeni group known as the Houthis.
But the Riyadh regime has failed to meet either of the objectives and continues to engage in a military campaign that has killed at least 12,000 civilians, seriously damaged the country’s infrastructure, and led to the cholera outbreak.
The Saudi war has also left more than 17 million people in the country food-insecure, with some 6.8 million of them in need of immediate aid.
Charity organizations have called on the UN to blacklist the Saudi-led coalition over serious violations of children’s rights in Yemen as statistics reveal massive child fatalities caused by the ongoing war against the impoverished nation.
According to a joint report prepared by Save the Children and Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict, the Saudi-led coalition committed "grave violations against children” in a series of 23 attacks on civilian sites, including hospitals and schools, in 2016, the Guardian reported on Thursday.
The campaigners urged the UN to highlight the crimes committed by the Saudi-led alliance, including massive killing and maiming of Yemeni children, in its annual report on child rights violations in conflict, expected to be released in August.
The annual UN report incorporates a blacklist of countries and groups that have committed violations such as killing or maiming children, recruiting children, abduction, sexual violence, or attacking schools or hospitals.