Yemeni children face ‘worst diphtheria outbreak’ amid blockade

Save the Children organisation said Yemen is going through its worst “diphtheria outbreak for a generation” which has so far killed at least 52 people.

Deaths resulting from a diphtheria outbreak in Yemen are “likely to rise” if the naval blockade imposed by a Saudi-led coalition against Yemen, an international aid group warned on Monday.

Save the Children said in a statement that Yemeni children are bearing the brunt of what it described as a “the worst diphtheria outbreak for a generation.”

It also said that its aid workers have been struggling to cope with the disease which has killed at least 52 people, mostly among children under 15, and is believed to have infected some 716 others since August. Diphtheria is a contagious and potentially fatal disease that primarily infects the throat and airways.

There’s so little help right now that families are carrying their children for hundreds of miles to get to us,” Mariam Aldogani, the group’s field coordinator in Hodeida, said. “But they’re arriving too late and infecting people on the way.”