Who is to blame for the world’s worst cholera outbreak?
More than half a million infected and almost 2000 dead in just four months in war-torn Yemen.
It has been called the “Forgotten War”, but it has caused the largest single-nation humanitarian crisis in the world in the poorest Arab country, Yemen.
Two and a half years of war have killed more than 10,000 people and has left two-thirds of the population in urgent need of humanitarian aid.
If that was not enough, a cholera epidemic, which began in April, is spreading fast in a country where the health system has collapsed.
And a million malnourished children under the age of five are particularly vulnerable.
Plus, the United Nations has accused the Saudi-led coalition battling Houthi fighters of stopping fuel supplies to aircraft trying to deliver aid into Yemen.
So who’s to blame for the outbreak and spread of cholera? And what’s being done to stop it?
Presenter: Sohail Rahman
Guests:
Suze Van Meegen – Advocacy Adviser at the Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen
Baraa Shiban – Yemeni human-rights activist and researcher for the human rights organisation Reprieve
Afshin Shahi – Senior Lecturer in Middle East politics and Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Bradford