UN working with Yemeni warring parties to prepare fragile health system for COVID-19:WHO

The United Nations system is working closely with warring sides in Yemen to prepare its hugely fractured health system and existing polio and cholera surveillance mechanisms for the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the embattled nation after it registered its first case, Michael J. Ryan, Executive Director of the World Health organization's (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme, said Monday.

Yemen has reported its first COVID-19 cases on Friday.

According to the WHO official, a huge amount of work was underway to prepare isolation facilities, train contact tracing teams and establish the lab facilities in the war-torn country.

"Yemen has a collapsed health system, a very fractured health system and a hugely vulnerable population, and the UN system is working with all sides to try and ensure that the surveillance systems that we have in place for polio, that we have in place for cholera, that we have in place for further diseases are now being fully activated to detect any suspected cases of COVID-19," Ryan told a regular media briefing.

According to him, the UN health agency and its partners have been providing health care to Yemen, where clinical care and many health facilities had been destroyed, through "adapted clinical pathways" over the past years and will be able to provide care to suspected COVID-19 patients.

"Potentially, medical oxygen ventilation is going to be a huge challenge. It's going to be a major challenge, and not just the ventilators but more the technicians to run those ventilators. So we are also looking at how we can provide critical care to people," Ryan stressed.

Yemen has been facing a long-running armed conflict between the government forces and the Houthi rebel movement, which has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis.