Syria Cholera Outbreak May Worsen If UN Aid Stops

Date: 06 January 2023 - 21:41

News ID: ۱۱۰۹۷۶

DAMASCUS (Al Jazeera) – Humanitarian workers operating in the last militant-held part of Syria fear a cholera outbreak sweeping the region will deepen further if the United Nations is forced to stop aid deliveries across the border from Turkey.
The area’s four million people live in dire conditions and rely heavily on the food and medicine that has been brought across the border since a 2014 UN Security Council resolution allowed such deliveries.
The Security Council is due to vote on Monday, a day before the current authorization expires, on renewing it for a further six months.
“The capabilities of the health sector are already very weak, and we suffer from an acute shortage of medicines, medical supplies and serums,” said Zuhair al-Qurat, the head of Idlib’s health directorate.
“Stopping cross-border aid will have a multiplier effect on the cholera outbreak in the region,” he told Reuters.
Diplomats say Russia has indicated it will allow the authorization’s renewal.
Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told Reuters the implementation of the current resolution – adopted in July – was “far from our expectations” and a final decision would be made by Moscow on Monday.
Top UN officials, including aid chief Martin Griffiths, have warned that ending the operation would be “catastrophic”.
Idlib has recorded more than 14,000 suspected cholera cases and Aleppo more than 11,000 since the outbreak began in September, making them the second and fourth worst-hit provinces in Syria respectively.
They are particularly vulnerable because they rely on water from the Euphrates river to drink and irrigate crops, and because the health sector in militant-held Syria has been battered by more than a decade of foreign-backed war.
The UN authorization allows agencies to bring in hygiene kits, chlorine tablets to disinfect water and equipment for eight cholera treatment centers with more than 200 beds. Non-governmental groups also truck safe drinking water to homes.