Publish date29 Jul 2017 - 12:50
Story Code : 277219

Yemeni hospital braving hard with cholera epidemic

​Staffs at Sabeen hospital in the Yemeni capital Sana’a sternly warn of the present condition in braving cholera.
Yemeni hospital braving hard with cholera epidemic

Staffs at Sabeen hospital in the Yemeni capital Sana’a sternly warn of the present condition in braving cholera depicting the setbacks they have to wrestle with in this regard, Taqrib News Agency (TNA) reported Telegraph as saying. 

According to the report, It wasn’t the airstrikes that was bringing the intensive care unit at Sabeen hospital to the brink of collapse, nor was it the wave of children beginning to show up with signs of cholera or the shortages of medicine to treat them. It was the bus fare. 

Staff at the hospital in the Yemeni capital Sana’a had not been paid salaries in months and though they were eager to come to work, many did not have even the 100 riyal (30p) for the bus each day. Some nurses were walking two hours to reach the hospital.  

Dr Najla al-Sonboli, the hospital’s head of pediatrics, knew the situation was not sustainable. The intensive care unit and the A&E could not keep running with ragged staff who often did not have food for themselves or their families.    

So Dr al-Sonboli did as she often did when she needed advice and turned to old friends at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where she obtained her masters and PhD before the outbreak of war in Yemen in 2015. 

Her former colleagues in Liverpool moved quickly to start raising funds in £5 and £10 increments from a global network of epidemiologists and public health experts. Soon a lifeline was opened from Merseyside to distant Sana’a.   

Each month the group sends £500 to £1000 to help make sure staff can get to work and afford a meal during long shifts. “The amount of money is small but it’s made a great difference,” Dr al-Sonboli told The Telegraph. “The emergency room didn’t collapse and we can cope with patients.”

The doctor and her team at Sabeen hospital are on the frontline of Yemen’s cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,800 people this year and spread to 21 of the country’s 23 provinces. More than 400,000 people have had the disease.

“Nowhere is really safe,” she mused. “Whenever we move from one place to another the danger is never far away.” 

She thinks about Liverpool sometimes and how homesick she was during her first three months in the city. Over time she made friends with both locals and internationals and she remembers long nights at Kimos, a restaurant that serves Middle Eastern fare alongside British staples.  

“I think of Liverpool now as a second home,” she said. “Maybe one day, if the good times come back, I can go back to Liverpool.”  

Each day Sabeen hospital, which is being supported by Unicef, takes in around 200 cholera patients. Often they are young children whose malnourished bodies shudder with constant vomiting and diarrhea as their helpless parents look on. 

Humanitarian agencies say the cholera outbreak is “a man-made crisis” that has exploded out of an almost perfect storm of misery in Yemen. 

The country was already the poorest in the Middle East before the war began and fighting has systematically toppled the pillars of a healthy society - the economy, the healthcare system, electricity infrastructure, clean water provision, and food supply have all collapsed.      

Out of the country’s 28 million people around more than half are food insecure and around 7 million are severely food insecure. “In layman’s terms it means those 7 million don’t know where their next meal will come from,” said Dr Sherin Varkey, the deputy Unicef chief in Yemen.

Facing a crippling shortage of healthcare facilities, Unicef has tried to mobilise a volunteer army to go house to house to counter the spread of cholera. The goal is to have people telling their neighbours about best practices to avoid the disease and carrying simple treatments to help those who already have it. 



/SR



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