Oxfam Official Says Spike In Deaths In Yemen's Aden Not Necessarily Caused By COVID-19

Oxfam Official Says Spike in Deaths in Yemen's Aden Not Necessarily Caused by COVID-19

Flawed diagnostic capacity makes it difficult to determinedly attribute the recent acute spike of mortality in the southern Yemeni city of Aden to the coronavirus infection, Samah Hadid, Oxfam's Director of Advocacy for Yemen, has told Sputnik

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 19th May, 2020) Flawed diagnostic capacity makes it difficult to determinedly attribute the recent acute spike of mortality in the southern Yemeni city of Aden to the coronavirus infection, Samah Hadid, Oxfam's Director of Advocacy for Yemen, has told Sputnik.

The past two weeks saw an approximate five-fold spike in the number of deaths in Aden from symptoms typical of the coronavirus infection, igniting fears that COVID-19 spreads unimpeded in the war-torn country, which has a poorly equipped health care sector.

"Since the beginning of May, the numbers of people dying from the disease in Aden have been increasing but there is still uncertainty about how much it is due to COVID-19. Mosquitos in the city spread malaria, dengue and chikungunya, and not everyone gets a reliable diagnosis or cause of death," Hadid said.

A total of 132 cases of the coronavirus infection have been confirmed in Yemen so far, and 21 people have died, according to the latest situation report by the World Health Organization.

In 1990, the southern Democratic Republic of Yemen and the northern Yemen Arab Republic united into what is Yemen today. The south has been since seeking secession. The military confrontation between the north and south has been ongoing in parallel with the conflict between the forces of the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Houthi militia, which has intensified since 2015, when Saudi Arabia joined the military action on the government's side.