Ministry of Water’s emergency operations hold meeting with UNICEF

The emergency operations of Water and Environment Ministry held on Sunday a meeting with UNICEF officails, headed by Eng. Nabil Abdullah Al-Wazir, Water and Environment Minister.

In the meeting, which was attended by UNICEF Deputy Resident Representative Bastian Fengo, cluster coordinator Emma Tuk and a number of the organization’s water experts, Al-Wazir stressed on the importance of the role that the emergency operations room plays in daily monitoring of the level of field interventions to reduce cholera.

The minister pointed out that accuracy in providing information contributes to achieving the desired goals.

The meeting touched on the efforts made by the Ministry, in cooperation with UNICEF, since the last quarter of 2016, to confront the cholera epidemic, and the success achieved in this regard, according to the UN testimony.

Al-wazir emphasized that the activities and interventions to achieve the water and environmental sanitation response to reduce cholera included all governorates without exception, in addition to the projects implemented throughout the countryside and urban areas.

The Minister called on international organizations operating in Yemen to assume their humanitarian responsibilities in alleviating the suffering of citizens as a result of the aggression and sensing the country’s needs of projects in the field of water and sanitation.

The meeting discussed a number of reports submitted by the Ministry’s emergency operations room, including the report on water and environmental sanitation response to the cholera epidemic for the period from August 26 to September 12, 2020.

The report included a matrix for analyzing the epidemic spread in ten governorates affected by cholera and the rate of increase and decrease within a month.

The meeting reviewed the activities agreed upon during the previous meeting between the Ministry and UNICEF and the roles assigned to each party.

During the meeting, the officials reviewed the report submitted by the National Coordinator for Water and Environmental Sanitation, Engineer Talal Al-Qadsi, regarding the activities and interventions implemented by the Water and Environmental Sanitation Cluster.

The report included displacement cases in Marib and Jawf governorates, which reached 11,800 families from January to September, and a plan for the needs required to respond in the field of water and environmental sanitation.