Yemen's civil war turns country into cholera breeding ground

SANAA, Yemen -- Collapsing on sidewalks and constantly vomiting, some of the Yemeni villagers barely make it to the tiny health center where doctors spread cardboard sheets in the backyard and use trees to hang bags of IV fluids for patients.

They are part of a stream of hundreds of suspected cholera victims that continues to converge on the center from the impoverished town of Bani Haydan in Yemen's northern Hajja province. Just hours after infection, vomiting and diarrhea cause severe dehydration that can kill victims without rapid intervention.

Yemen's raging two-year conflict has turned the country into an incubator for lethal cholera: Primitive sanitation and water systems put Yemenis at risk of drinking feces-contaminated water; wells are dirtied by runoff from rainfall on piles of garbage left uncollected for weeks; farmland is irrigated with broken sewers due to lax oversight and corruption; medical intervention is delayed due to unpaid government employees and half the country's health facilities being out of service.

The cholera outbreak in Haiti has killed more than 9,000 people since 2010, but Yemen has seen the largest outbreak of the disease recorded in recent memory in any country in a single year. The United Nations and international-aid organizations said they are shocked at the speed and scale of the outbreak.

One in every 120 Yemenis is suspected of being sick with cholera, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

There have been about 2,000 deaths in the country since April 27. About 5,000 people fall sick daily, and more than 450,000 more may have the disease, according to the World Health Organization.

The majority of those exposed to the bacteria known as Vibrio cholerae don't fall sick, and only 1 in 10 infected people develop signs of cholera. Cases are mostly treatable with rehydration.

The role the war has played in Yemen's cholera outbreak can't be overemphasized, said Adeeb al-Rassabi, Sanaa general coordinator for the Electronic Disease and Warning System, the country's epidemic surveillance system.

If not for the conflict, "we would have been able to contain cholera in no more than one month, no more, no doubt," al-Rassabi said.