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YEMEN

Yemen faces collapse of health system: WHO

Yemen risks an imminent collapse in its health system, the Geneva-based UN health agency warned on Tuesday, estimating the latest death toll from fighting there at 944.

Published: 21 April 2015 18:31 CEST
Yemen faces collapse of health system: WHO
WHO headquarters in Geneva. Photo: Yann Forget

Another 3,487 people have been listed as injured as of April 17th, the World Health Organization said, citing data from medical facilities in Yemen, and stressing that the true numbers were probably higher because many people were unable to reach hospitals for treatment.
   
Last Friday, the WHO had put the toll at 767 deaths and 2,906 injured in the latest round of fighting that began on March 19th.

The WHO toll does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
   
The organization also warned that the impoverished Arabian peninsula nation's health services were on the brink of collapse with life-saving medicines and key medical supplies running out.
   
"Power cuts and fuel shortages also threaten to disrupt the vaccine cold chain, leaving millions of children below the age of five unvaccinated," WHO said in a statement.
   
"This increases the risk of communicable diseases such as measles, which is prevalent in Yemen, as well as polio, which has been eliminated but is now at risk of reappearing," it added.
   
WHO said the number of patients able to access health facilities had plummeted since the escalation of hostilities, with a 40 percent drop in the number of daily consultations.
   
"The major hospitals will soon be completely unable to provide humanitarian and emergency services or to perform operations and provide intensive care to needy patients," it quoted the health ministry as saying.

"According to the ministry, life-saving and health protection programmes will gradually collapse due to lack of medicines for chronic diseases such as kidney dialysis, cardiac and oncology," WHO said.

"Laboratory and blood transfusion services are also at risk."

Yemen, strategically located near key shipping routes and bordering oil-rich Saudi Arabia, was plunged into chaos last year when Iran-backed Huthi Shiite rebels seized the capital Sanaa.
   
A coalition of Sunni Arab nations led by Saudi Arabia launched air strikes last month against the rebels, vowing to restore the authority of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled to Riyadh as the rebels advanced on his southern refuge of Aden.
   
On Tuesday, medics in Yemen reported that 38 civilians had been killed and 532 wounded when the coalition struck a missile depot in the Yemeni capital on Monday.

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ANGELA MERKEL

WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday it would set up a global data hub in Berlin to analyse information on emerging pandemic threats, filling the gaps exposed by Covid-19.

Published: 5 May 2021 17:23 CEST
WHO to set up pandemic data hub in Berlin
Angela Merkel on May 5th. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP Pool | John Macdougall

The WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence, which will start operating later this year, is set to analyse data quickly and in detail, in order to predict, prevent, detect, prepare for and respond to risks worldwide.

The hub will try to get ahead of the game, looking for pre-signals that go far beyond current systems that monitor publicly available information for signs of emerging outbreaks.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed gaps in the global systems for pandemic and epidemic intelligence,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told journalists.

“There will be more viruses that will emerge with the potential for sparking epidemics or pandemics.

“Viruses move fast. But data can move even faster. With the right information, countries and communities can stay one step ahead of an emerging risk and save lives.”

READ ALSO: ‘We are still in the third wave’: German Health Minister urges caution in reopening after shutdown

Merging digital, health expertise

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Berlin was a good location for the hub as it already had leading players in the digital and health fields, such as the Robert Koch Institute.

“If that expertise is now supplemented by the WHO Hub, we will create a unique environment for pandemic and health research here in Berlin – an environment from which important action-oriented insights will emerge for governments and leaders around the world,” she said in a video message.

It is hoped that the site will be operational from September. Its budget is still under discussion, while Germany will meet the start-up costs.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn said the world needed the capacity to detect outbreaks with the potential to become health crises “before the threat becomes a sad reality”.

Global systems were currently “insufficiently prepared” to handle the risks posed by outbreaks, mutations of existing pathogens, extensions of diseases to previously unaffected populations, and diseases jumping species from animals to humans, he added.

“There’s a clear need for a stronger global early warning alert and emergency response system with improved public health intelligence,” he said.

“Better data and better analytics are key for better decisions.”

 Looking for pre-signals

“There are signals that may occur before epidemics happen… data that can give us pre-signals,” said WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan. That information could drive early decision-making, he added.

“The Hub will allow us to develop tools for that sort of predictive analytics,” he said.

A joint mission by international and Chinese scientists concluded in March that the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes Covid-19 disease most likely passed to humans from a bat via an intermediary animal.

The experts’ report suggested the outbreak could have started as far back as September 2019, long before it was first detected in December 2019 in Wuhan.

The WHO only became aware of the new coronavirus on December 31st that year, when its epidemic intelligence service and its China office spotted a media report and a mention by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission of a mysterious cluster of pneumonia cases.

The Covid-19 pandemic has killed at least 3.2 million people and more than 154 million cases have been registered worldwide since then, according to tallies from official sources compiled by AFP.

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