Cholera Daily expansion of the disaster in Yemen

In Yemen raging the largest known cholera epidemic. More than 500,000 people in Yemen have cholera. Nearly 2,000 have already died, and 5,000 are infected each day.

Deadly bacteria
Cholera is called "vomiting diarrhea of ​​bile". The cause is an infection with the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, which devastates especially the small intestine.

Yemen is the poorhouse of Arabia, people are suffering from dictatorship, terror and hunger. Now cholera is spreading. (Image: Itan1409 / fotolia.com)

How do humans become infected??
The bacteria are usually transmitted in polluted water and contaminated food.

What are the symptoms?
Cholera is characterized by extreme diarrhea and vomiting. Blue spots cover the body. The patients very quickly lose a lot of weight. The body is drying up.

electrolyte loss
The distribution of water is mainly organized by electrolytes. Sodium controls extracellular fluid like blood volume. If the liquid shrinks, the electrolyte system collapses. There is a danger to your life.

Mineral water
Cholera patients always have to drink mineral water to slow the fluid loss.

Without treatment
Without treatment, 20% to 70% of all patients die.

Humanitarian disaster
Yemen is the poorhouse of Arabia. Corrupt dictators, Islamist terror and civil war, as well as a war of aggression by Saudi Arabia on the Shiites in Yemen make life hell on earth.

Medically insufficient
The terror of the Wahhabi Saudis and their Western allies has destroyed more than half of all hospitals in Yemen. Every second person in Yemen lives without any medical care and is helplessly exposed to epidemics.

Plague without limits
Nigel Timmins, the head of emergency relief in Yemen says: "In just three months in Yemen, more people have been infected with cholera than in any other country within a year."

Easy to handle
The cynical thing is. Cholera is easy to treat. Cholera patients are treated with an oral rehydration solution. This consists of glucose and electrolytes in water.

Mortality drops to 1%
Instead of up to 70%, only about 1% of patients die with such treatment. Most of the 2,000 people who died so far would most likely have survived.

No epidemic of the South
Cholera spreads not by the climate, but by filthy water and catastrophic hygiene. The plague has therefore disappeared in the Western capital states. The bacteria can be combated, the drinking water is clean, the wastewater cleared.

No problem in the West
Vaccination against the disease is as standard in Europe as rehydration plus antibiotics.

The pathogen is rampant in Asia and Africa
It looks different in many countries in Asia and Africa, in India, Tanzania or Yemen.
Drinking water is often contaminated with the cholera pathogen, through faeces it spreads in the river, sea and groundwater. Fish, which catch the locals from the contaminated water, additionally infect humans.

Horror in Yemen
Yemen is more suitable for the spread of cholera and other epidemics than most countries in the world: the majority of people are malnourished and the body's immune system is disturbed.

Worse than in the Middle Ages
There is hardly any medical care and no charitable infrastructure. Due to war and poverty, hygienic conditions are worse than in the European Middle Ages. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)