This week Yemen reaches a grim milestone: half a million people are sick with suspected cholera this year, almost 2,000 of whom have died. It’s the world’s worst cholera outbreak in the midst of the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.

Conflict, hunger and disease are daily affairs in this war battered country: two thirds of the population – 17 million people – do not know where their next meal will come from; 5,000 more Yemenis fall ill with cholera or acute watery diarrhoea every day.

Cholera is an old and insidious disease. It thrives where there is famine, poverty, conflict and weak governance. It goes after the most vulnerable: half of all suspected cholera cases and a quarter of associated deaths in Yemen are among children; a third of those who die of cholera are aged over sixty. Hunger and malnutrition exacerbate vulnerability to cholera and acute watery diarrhoea – and disease, in turn, can drive malnutrition: a deadly cycle. Two weeks ago in Yemen, we met a young boy at al-Sabeen Hospital in Sana’a. Less than five years old, he was breathing heavily on a hospital bed, an IV attached to the veins of his small hands to help him battle cholera and malnutrition. We were so focussed on his desperate condition that we almost missed his mother, sitting nearby, who was also very ill, and needed attention. 

Their suffering is mirrored many thousands of times over across the country. 

While in Yemen, we talked with the sick, their families and the health workers caring for them.

We saw the tragic state of a health system in ruins, with less than half of its facilities able to offer the most basic medical care.

We saw the impossible conditions that health workers face day in day out; 30,000 have not been paid their salaries in nearly a year.

But we also saw that coordinated action can save lives and bring an end to this epidemic. 

More than 99 per cent of people sick with suspected cholera or severe acute watery diarrhoea who can access health services are now surviving.