Ann Infect Dis Epidemiol | Volume 3, Issue 2 | Research Article | Open Access
Abdulla Salem Bin Ghouth*
Department of Community Medicine, Hadramout University, Yemen
*Correspondance to: Abdulla Salem Bin Ghouth
Fulltext PDFBackground: The current war in Yemen resulting a world's worst humanitarian crisis, the conflict has resulted in over 10,000 deaths and two million people displaced. The other face of the war is occurrence a lot of epidemics in a country that has a catastrophic indicator of malnutrition. The aim of this paper is to highlight on the epidemiological aspects of the current war in Yemen.
Methods: Review the literature that either extracted from PubMed, Google search or the available local and international reports related to epidemics in Yemen.
Results: A total of 1,145,491 suspected cholera cases were reported during the period from 27 April 2017 to 19 August 2018 with 2379 deaths and attack rate (AR) of 402/10,000. A total of 2,203 probable diphtheria cases and 116 deaths were reported from 20 governorates during the period from 13 August 2017 to 19 August 2018 giving the CFR% of 5.3% and AR of 0.8/10,000. A sharp decline in coverage of measles and rubella vaccination to around 54% coverage nationally by late 2015 resulting that four measles outbreaks have been declared since the beginning of 2016. During the year 2017 a local meningitis outbreak hit 6 governorates in Yemen resulting 2854 suspected cases and 60 deaths (CFR% was 2.1%). The trend of dengue cases was increased in 2016 than 2015; the AR in 2016 and 2017 is increasing. The incidence of the total reported malaria cases (confirmed and clinical) was increased from 5/1000 population in 2015 to 8.1/1000 population in 2016.
Conclusion: From Humanitarian perspective the war in Yemen has another ugly face represented in the victims of epidemics of cholera, diphtheria, measles, meningitis, dengue and malaria. Malnutrition, inability of health system to achieve universal vaccination coverage, inadequate safe water supply and poor sanitation are main determinants of poor health.
Epidemics; Yemen; Humanitarian crises
Ghouth ASB. The Multi-Epidemics in Yemen: the Ugly Face of the War. Ann Infect Dis Epidemiol. 2018;3(2):1033.