Yemen Reports Its 1st COVID-19 Case : NPR

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Now to Yemen the place support employees say they’re bracing for the worst after the nation recorded its first coronavirus case this week. After 5 years of combating between a Saudi-led alliance and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the well being care system in Yemen is already battered. NPR’s Jane Arraf has this report from Amman, Jordan.

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UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: (Crying).

JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: In a UNICEF video, youngsters are handled at a Yemeni hospital for malnutrition and illness. Three-quarters of the inhabitants now is determined by meals and medical support, most of it delivered or funded by support organizations. Yemen has been largely lower off from the world by combating. This week, it recorded its first COVID-19 case. Lise Grande, the pinnacle of the U.N.’s humanitarian program in Yemen, spoke to us from the capital, Sanaa. She says the nation is just not ready because the virus spreads.

LISE GRANDE: Authorities within the north and authorities within the south, they’ve stopped the arrival of passengers. They’ve gone right into a lockdown. We’re struggling to get the sort of gear and the sort of assets and the sorts of medicines that we want right here.

ARRAF: U.N. companies are competing for issues like ventilators and coronavirus assessments in what has develop into a worldwide competitors for lifesaving assets. Yemen imports nearly all of its meals and drugs. The brand new restrictions have made getting meals and medical care to individuals much more tough. The Norwegian Refugee Council’s advocacy director, Sultana Begum, talking to us from London, says she has appealed to Yemeni authorities to permit support operations to proceed.

SULTANA BEGUM: As Yemen prepares, there are new restrictions which are being put in place, restrictions in motion, restrictions by way of street closures, by way of U.N. flights carrying support employees coming in and in a foreign country. So our enchantment to them, actually, is once they’re making ready to fight the virus that they discover protected measures to work with us.

ARRAF: The U.N. can also be going through a funding disaster, partially as a result of final month, the US lower off tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in support to Yemen, saying some support was susceptible to being diverted by armed teams.

GRANDE: There are 41 main U.N. applications, and 31 of these applications will both be shut this month of April or decreased. We’re speaking meals applications, well being applications, water and sanitation applications, safety applications, shelter applications. So we’ve got the disaster created by the battle. We have now the disaster created by COVID.

ARRAF: All that’s amid a fragile cease-fire. The U.N.’s political envoy says he’ll attempt to carry the 2 sides again to talks, even when it is a digital negotiating desk. Jane Arraf, NPR Information, Amman, Jordan.

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