Yemen's cholera outbreak now the worst in history as millionth case looms | Hacker News Reader

Yemen's cholera outbreak now the worst in history as millionth case looms

theguardian.com

129 pointsjansho56 comments

Nice, Guardian. Only a passing mention of the civil war that has led to all this. The US and UK need to stop funding Saudi Arabia's military in order for this to stop happening in Yemen.

Completely. Really that Saudi Arabia effort of a 'country' needs to be boycotted for the human rights abuses and attitude towards women.

However the big news in the UK yesterday was about BAE systems not able to keep everyone working and how hoped for orders from Saudi Arabia would save the day.

So the share price of BAE systems and a few death industry Jobs matters more than cholera.

To be fair there are little day to day effects of the cholera epidemic for people in the UK and people generally prefer stories more immediately applicable to them

It was an article about cholera and how it affects people in Yemen.

The Guardian has article right next to the cholera article titled 'Blame the Saudis for Yemen's cholera outbreak – they are targeting the people'.

It's not just funding. It's supplying with weapons and bombs and intelligence.

"Conflict" is mentioned four times in the article and it very clearly states:

More than two years of fighting between the Saudi-led coalition and Houthi rebels has crippled the country, causing widespread internal displacement, the collapse of the public health system, and leaving millions on the brink of famine.

It does not, however, mention US/UK support for it. I agree it would be better to connect the dismay that this article engenders in the reader with outrage for our support for Saudi Arabia.

> The US and UK need to stop funding Saudi Arabia's military in order for this to stop happening in Yemen.

It's not so simple. It's all about influence between Iran (which means Iran, Russia etc block) and Saudi Arabia (which means USA, UK etc side block) in Yemen. You can be on one side or on the other, there is no middle ground there. None of the players really cares about Yemen, on this level game is different, there are no "values" besides influence/money.

So Yemen is a proxy war, just like Syria is then?

The Guardian has been giving pretty decent coverage to the Yemen conflict (and the US/UK/Saudi relation it) overall, actually. Well above the level most people in the U.S. would have a stomach for, were they to actually pay attention to this rather horrid and depraved state of affairs being conducted on the global stage, in their names.

At the same time, there are only so many column inches available, and there's only so much effort (and so many lines) one can devote to the regurgitating the broader context (that's generally covered in other articles they run).

Is it a civil war or is Saudi Arabia waging war against Yemen?

Their pretty decent coverage is hidden behind the first link in the article, "Yemen": https://www.theguardian.com/world/yemen

>>The US and UK need to stop funding Saudi Arabia's military

It's the other way around. We need oil, at least for now, so we have to make sure it makes it to the market and Saudis are the major player when it comes to adjusting prices. In exchange, they buy a lot or favors from the power that be...mainly weapons, that provide jobs for US, UK, Germany etc. US could probably overthrow the Saudis in a week if it wanted, and they know.

weasel statement: They would be fighting anyway, oil or no oil, US or no US involvement.

I hit the link already mildly fuming at what I thought was clickbait because there's no way any place could be on track for one million cases of cholera in today's world. Quite heartbreaking to find out the headline is factual.

I wonder if Puerto Rico will begin showing Cholera outbreaks given it usually happens when sanitation systems fail or are destroyed.

Ironical that the only help that Yemen - the poorest country in the region - can get from the neighbouring resource rich countries is bombs raining from the sky. Now, Saudi Arabia so hates the Shias that they would rather bomb Yemen to the 3rd century than have the Shias takeover. Yet, surprisingly, the long serving Ali Abdullah Saleh himself a Shia, was always friendly to the Saudis. So what changed?

Iran, a Shia country, is getting more powerful, which Saudi Arabia (probably rightly) sees as a threat to its regional dominance.

In general, Shias and Sunnis got along quite peacefully until a few decades ago.

And unfortunately, when it comes to religion, this is a flat-out religious war.

But I mean, they're all Moslems, right? It has to do with who the rightful heir to Mohammed is. Is it Ali, or Abu Bakr? The answer to that question thus says which side of the interpretation of "Shia" or "Sunni" is.

Long story short, it's not resolvable without a great deal of violence. Disagreements about succession are hardly ever peaceful.

That does not address the question of what has changed causing SA to whack at everything Shia now, where it did not do so before.

The lack of repercussion from the world at large must be part of it.

The new Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia[0] is behind this and other 'efforts' in the Kingdom.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/saudi-crown-pr...

Iran is rising and the U.S. is unsteady in the region. The reality is that the U.S. hardly needs MidEast oil anymore. North America is more important to U.S. energy markets. The U.S. imports 3x as much petroleum from Canada as from Saudi Arabia. So the House of Saud is both fearful and no longer restrained.

War is the biggest factor in this, but Yemen had a very serious problem with water scarcity to begin with. They were already on track to run out of water in their main city within a few years. Many were dependent on trucked-in water.[1] Now even that is impossible.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals...

One of the biggest causes for the lack of water is the Yemeni use of khat (or qat), a stimulant that requires lots of water.[1]

[1] https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/yemen/2013-07-23/how...

Real happy to see Saudi Arabia really earn their place as head of UN humans rights council!

It’s an atrocious war, being fought by the Saudis using cutting edge US weapons with US diplomatic support against a largely defenseless population.

This is the result of incompetency and inadequacy at multiple levels.

Yemen ceased their vaccine campaign against cholera.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/cholera-vaccination-...

Cholera vaccines are not that effective... That's not the problem here.

It’s just heartbreaking that the solution to cholera is so simple. Boiled water and salt/sugar solution. What on Earth is going on in Yemen :(

I suppose, you don't eat fruits or uncooked vegetables? Transmission isn't just limited to using dirty water.

Note that the headline is saying that the Yemen cholera epidemic is the worst in recorded history by number of cases. I assume rehydration salts are available and being used by the simple fact that the case fatality rate is fairly low-- 0.26%. Seasonal flu, by comparison, has a CFR of ~0.1%.

Cholera before rehydration salts could be quite deadly-- as recently as 1974, Yemen reported a CFR of 16.67%: http://apps.who.int/gho/data/node.main.177

(Some of the numbers reported in that table are oddly high-- Vietnam reported a CFR of 100% in 1954, then 4.32% ten years later. They're not showing the denominator, so the hundred percent figure could be just from a handful of cases. Reminds me of Ebola, which was thought to be a death sentence from the awful CFRs reported from small outbreaks, but brought down to a "mere" 25% with aggressive treatment in Western hospitals.)

In a correspondence between the Austrian and the German military during World War I, the Austrian army described their situation as serious, but not disastrous. The German military replied that their situation was disastrous, but not serious.

I know likewise that our situation is disastrous with an climate crisis, economic crisis, refugee crisis, political crisis and now the worst cholera crisis in history too, but the situation still isn't seriously enough command some sort of action.

Maybe the UK could give some % of the profits from selling to the Saudis to use on Yemen to help out.

Maybe the Saudis could take all the money they're spending on weapons systems and donate it to professional NGOs that will solve this crisis. And then spend the next thousand years in penitence for their crimes against the people of Yemen.

Has there been a recent uptick in Yemeni immigrants to the U.S.? Almost every day for the last few months I’ve seen Yemeni women in NYC wearing full niqabs, which I’d never seen here before this year.

Considering that Yemen is one of the countries on Trump's travel-ban I don't see how that would be the case. Unless you meant recent but not completely recent.

Just wondering, how do you know they're Yemeni?

Because they're in Morris Park in the Bronx, which is little Yemen, or else in Pelham Parkway or the New York Botanical Garden, which are adjacent. Obviously they're not going to talk to me if I were to try to start a conversation, but it's a pretty safe guess, especially since Yemen is one of the main countries where women where niqab.

> Yemen is the main country where women where niqab

I'd be surprised if this were true. Would you have a source for this?

There are many kinds of head coverings worn in that part of the world. Some are strongly associated with particular areas.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/24118241

I'm thankful every day that I live in a developed nation that spares from this kind of suffering. We take so much for granted in the developed world, the cynicism with which many of us view our own nations is naive and shortsighted.

Don't be so thankful because if your country lose (as it is probably one of the countries supporting this and other invasions on the globe), it might happen to be your time to suffer the same fate.

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