COVID-19 Case Numbers Worrying in Yemen, WHO Working Hard to Help - Ryan

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th May, 2020) COVID-19 case numbers in Yemen are worrying, the World Health Organization (WHO) is working hard to provide assistance, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Michael J. Ryan said Friday.

According to the official data from WHO, Yemen has 72 confirmed infections, but WHO has said recently that there may be more cases.

"If we take the case of of Yemen, there's a very worrying situation emerging in terms of the number of cases in both the north and the south. And WHO has been working very very hard in Yemen, despite these difficulties with our UN partners," Ryan told a press conference.

According to the official, WHO has repurposed 26 emergency operations center across the country and 300 rapid response teams trained for cholera. Four COVID hotlines have been set up.

"We need about a thousand of those teams with two to five staff per team. These are the contact tracing teams, the teams that go out and look for cases and do that public health work we're always talking about. Most of these teams are mobile. These are 202 district mobile teams in the north and 131 in the south," Ryan continued.

In addition, WHO has supported repurposing of four public health labs and trained 28 lab technicians using PCR-based tests. WHO has carried out more than 7,000 tests already.

"We have created 19 isolation units - 16 are in progress, 3 are completed, - and we've trained 92 front line workers to staff those units so far ... We've provided 1,000 ICU beds, 417 ventilators," Ryan said.

"I can assure you, moving that type of material in this situation, training health workers in this situation, doing surveillance in this situation, contact tracing in this situation is difficult, stressful and dangerous work ... It is going to be very difficult to contain this virus in settings like this, having to operate in conditions like this unless we get a more peaceful environment to do this," the WHO official said.

The situation in Yemen is complicated by the conflict that has been ongoing for the past several years. Yemeni civilians have experienced food shortages and disease outbreak in the past five years.