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Okay, introducing Claire Manera.
She is project coordinator for Medicines Sans Frontiers, aka Doctors Without Borders.
Welcome to the show.
How are you?
Hi, I'm fine.
It's really nice to talk to you.
I really appreciate you joining us on the show, a very important topic today.
And that is the spread of cholera in Yemen, in the context, of course, of the war that continues to rage there.
So can you please, first of all, just tell me and the rest of the ignorant, which I'm pleading guilty here, what exactly is cholera?
What's so bad about it?
And what is happening in Yemen that it's spreading now?
Sure.
Well, cholera is a bacteria that spreads extremely quickly.
So one of the worst things about the disease is that once it starts, it's very hard to stop it spreading.
And it causes intense vomiting and diarrhea in the patients, which is horrible, but it's completely treatable if people can reach us on time.
And the treatment that we provide, it's rehydration.
So the treatment is very basic and people can be cured within hours and then go home if they can get to us.
But the, if they can get to you, sounds like a pretty big catch there, huh?
Yeah, it is.
And I guess this is what I've been struggling with today, because since the start of the outbreak in a month, we've seen 3,200 patients and it's been absolutely overwhelming for us.
But we're managing somehow to be keeping people alive and sending them home.
Although now, today I'm hearing that in the very far and hard to reach areas, there's a lot of deaths occurring because people are very poor, they have no money, no transport, there's no way they can reach us in time.
And we're having deaths, like children dying just 10 minutes before reaching us in our facilities, which is really heartbreaking.
Yeah.
Well now, if the treatment is so easy, can you just start passing out bags of saline and needles and hope that they are distributed?
Yeah, that's exactly right.
So well, it's not that simple, but what we need to do now is get out to these communities that are in valleys and cut off from roads and have no money at all.
As well as treating patients in the hospital, we're going to be sending teams out to also give out soap, which is critical for prevention of cholera, to make sure we can provide safe drinking water just by chlorinating and disinfecting it and educating people on preventing it, but also giving them fluids so that we can get people rehydrated and stop the rate of death happening so fast.
Okay, so what's the cause of this?
Well, because of the conflict that's been going on here for two years, and cholera has never been seen before in the area where I am.
It's the first time that it's happened in this area, and people just don't know what to do.
And it's terrifying for them to see their families, their loved ones dying so quickly from this foreign disease they've never seen before.
But basically, from two years of conflict, all the health facilities around, especially in the remote areas, have shut down.
People have received no salaries, there's very high rates of malnutrition, meaning that any disease affects people a lot quicker and in a more severe way, and there's no way to access healthcare at all.
If the war continues at this rate, it's going to be very hard to stop the spread of cholera.
Well, and if it's that easy to transmit, and it causes, as you're saying, diarrhea and vomiting and all these things, of course, that's a great way to help spread it too.
And then, I guess as long as people don't have reliable sources of drinking water, once this has started, it sounds like it's almost impossible to stop.
Yeah, it is.
It's a race against time, and what we're asking for is that the international community acts faster and realizes just how quickly that people are dying out here, because with every day that goes by, we're receiving up to 200 patients a day just in the facilities that I'm helping to manage here.
So it's really something that happens fast, and we need more funding so that other agencies can also get out and help us.
It's not something we can manage on our own, not with a crisis of this magnitude.
Mm-hmm.
All right, well, so there's been a lot of talk lately about a Saudi attack on the port of Hodeidah on the Red Sea, and how that would be a real problem for all the NGOs and health organizations trying to provide relief aid to the civilian population and that kind of thing.
Can you comment on that?
Well, what I can say is that what we need now, more than anything, is to get our supplies through without any delays at all, and Hodeidah is the last port, so if this one is destroyed, the result will be catastrophic with the cholera outbreak right now.
So we're lucky, as MSF, we received yesterday 60 tons of cargo which came in through a charter, but not all the other agencies have access like this, and we've received chlorine, which is absolutely critical for this response, and now within Yemen there's a shortage of chlorine on the market.
There's basically none left, so what we need is for everyone to get their supplies in quickly and get out there to stop the spread.
Okay, well, how can people participate in helping this particular mission, especially if they want to?
I think the best way for the public is, firstly, if they have some funds that they can donate to help the cholera response for the other agencies in Yemen, as well as MSF, but there's other agencies that are very strong at doing water and sanitation and hygiene, and they also play a critical role in this.
So to be providing extra funds is very necessary, and then I guess in the bigger picture, just be aware and educated of how much people are suffering because of this conflict, and two years of conflict, so many people have already died, and to add on the top of that cholera plus malnutrition, it's devastating for a population, and they don't deserve it.
All right, well, it's heroic work that you're doing over there, truly.
Thank you so much for coming on the show to talk with us about it.
Oh, thanks for listening.
All right, you guys, that is Claire Minera.
She is at Medicines Sends Frontiers, aka Doctors Without Borders, there in Yemen saving lives from America's war.
Scott Horton Show, check out the archives at scotthorton.org.
Follow me at libertarianinstitute.org slash scotthortonshow and on Twitter at scotthortonshow.
Thanks, you guys.
