Anxiety Grows Among Yemenis Living in Squalid Camps as COVID-19 Cases Rise

Yemen's health system has all but collapsed since the conflict broke out in 2014. AFP
Yemen's health system has all but collapsed since the conflict broke out in 2014. AFP
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Anxiety Grows Among Yemenis Living in Squalid Camps as COVID-19 Cases Rise

Yemen's health system has all but collapsed since the conflict broke out in 2014. AFP
Yemen's health system has all but collapsed since the conflict broke out in 2014. AFP

War in Yemen has pushed millions to the brink of famine in a country ill-prepared to face the new health threat, especially in the country's squalid camps that are ideal breeding grounds for disease.

In a desolate camp for Yemenis displaced by war, Nasima Ahmed wonders how she and her four children can possibly protect themselves as the novel coronavirus stalks the country.

"We are not ready for the coronavirus because we have nothing," Ahmed told AFP at her tent, which is practically empty except for two ragged foam mattresses.

"We need to be able to store food in case a quarantine is imposed," she said.

"I am afraid. I am scared for my children since this virus may lead to our deaths."

Squalid camps for internally displaced people like the one where Ahmed lives in Khokha, outside the Red Sea port city of Hodeida come with little chance of proper sanitation or social distancing.

Since the first COVID-19 cases were reported in Yemen last month, anxiety has grown among those living in tents -- fashioned from canvas, branches and scraps of plastic -- who are among the worst-off in the Arab world's poorest nation.

Yemen's health system has all but collapsed since the conflict broke out in 2014, with some 20 million people -- more than two thirds of the population -- needing aid to survive, according to the United Nations.

The government has so far reported 65 coronavirus cases, including 10 deaths, while the Houthis have announced two infections, including one death.

However, an official in the government's interim capital of Aden said the number of cases could be much higher. Also, the Yemeni government accuse Houthis of underreporting cases.

"Seventy people died of various diseases in Aden in the 24 hours between Sunday and Monday," the official, who works in the government's crisis response unit, told AFP.

"It could be from the coronavirus... but in the absence of international organisations and testing, there is no way to tell," said the official, who sport on condition of anonymity.

Around 3.3 million people have been displaced, forced to live in abandoned schools or camps where diseases such as cholera run rampant due to the scarcity of clean water and medication.

Aden resident Saddam Bijash complained he had not seen "any tangible measures" to curb the disease.

"We expect the virus to spread and for a disaster that no one will be able to control," he told AFP.

As children played in the dust outside the rows of makeshift tents at the camp in Khokha, Salah Darwish, one of the displaced, said he was fearful for the young and the elderly.

"The virus will spread like wildfire -- we are afraid and anxious," he said.



Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
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Water Crisis Batters War-Torn Sudan as Temperatures Soar

People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)
People refill donkey-drawn water tanks during a water crisis in Port Sudan in the Red Sea State of war-torn Sudan on April 9, 2024. (AFP)

War, climate change and man-made shortages have brought Sudan -- a nation already facing a litany of horrors -- to the shores of a water crisis.

"Since the war began, two of my children have walked 14 kilometers (nine miles) every day to get water for the family," Issa, a father of seven, told AFP from North Darfur state.

In the blistering sun, as temperatures climb past 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), Issa's family -- along with 65,000 other residents of the Sortoni displacement camp -- suffer the weight of the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

When the first shots rang out more than a year ago, most foreign aid groups -- including the one operating Sortoni's local water station -- could no longer operate. Residents were left to fend for themselves.

The country at large, despite its many water sources including the mighty Nile River, is no stranger to water scarcity.

Even before the war, a quarter of the population had to walk more than 50 minutes to fetch water, according to the United Nations.

Now, from the western deserts of Darfur, through the fertile Nile Valley and all the way to the Red Sea coast, a water crisis has hit 48 million war-weary Sudanese who the US ambassador to the United Nations on Friday said are already facing "the largest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet."

- No fuel, no water -

Around 110 kilometers east of Sortoni, deadly clashes in North Darfur's capital of El-Fasher, besieged by RSF, threaten water access for more than 800,000 civilians.

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Friday said fighting in El-Fasher had killed at least 226.

Just outside the city, fighting over the Golo water reservoir "risks cutting off safe and adequate water for about 270,000 people", the UN children's agency UNICEF has warned.

Access to water and other scarce resources has long been a source of conflict in Sudan.

The UN Security Council on Thursday demanded that the siege of El-Fasher end.

If it goes on, hundreds of thousands more people who rely on the area's groundwater will go without.

"The water is there, but it's more than 60 meters (66 yards) deep, deeper than a hand-pump can go," according to a European diplomat with years of experience in Sudan's water sector.

"If the RSF doesn't allow fuel to go in, the water stations will stop working," he told AFP, requesting anonymity because the diplomat was not authorized to speak to media.

"For a large part of the population, there will simply be no water."

Already in the nearby village of Shaqra, where 40,000 people have sought shelter, "people stand in lines 300 meters long to get drinking water," said Adam Rijal, spokesperson for the civilian-led General Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.

In photos he sent to AFP, some women and children can be seen huddled under the shade of lonely acacia trees, while most swelter in the blazing sun, waiting their turn.

- Dirty water -

Sudan is hard-hit by climate change, and "you see it most clearly in the increase in temperature and rainfall intensity," the diplomat said.

This summer, the mercury is expected to continue rising until the rainy season hits in August, bringing with it torrential floods that kill dozens every year.

The capital Khartoum sits at the legendary meeting point of the Blue Nile and White Nile rivers -- yet its people are parched.

The Soba water station, which supplies water to much of the capital, "has been out of service since the war began," said a volunteer from the local resistance committee, one of hundreds of grassroots groups coordinating wartime aid.

People have since been buying untreated "water off of animal-drawn carts, which they can hardly afford and exposes them to diseases," he told AFP, requesting anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Entire neighborhoods of Khartoum North "have gone without drinking water for a year," another local volunteer told AFP, requesting to be identified only by his first name, Salah.

"People wanted to stay in their homes, even through the fighting, but they couldn't last without water," Salah said.

- Parched and displaced -

Hundreds of thousands have fled the fighting eastward, many to the de facto capital of Port Sudan on the Red Sea -- itself facing a "huge water issue" that will only get "worse in the summer months," resident al-Sadek Hussein worries.

The city depends on only one inadequate reservoir for its water supply.

Here, too, citizens rely on horse- and donkey-drawn carts to deliver water, using "tools that need to be monitored and controlled to prevent contamination," public health expert Taha Taher told AFP.

"But with all the displacement, of course this doesn't happen," he said.

Between April 2023 and March 2024, the health ministry recorded nearly 11,000 cases of cholera -- a disease endemic to Sudan, "but not like this" when it has become "year-round," the European diplomat said.

The outbreak comes with the majority of Sudan's hospitals shut down and the United States warning on Friday that a famine of historic global proportions could unfold without urgent action.

"Health care has collapsed, people are drinking dirty water, they are hungry and will get hungrier, which will kill many, many more," the diplomat said.