Inside Yemen: Cholera outbreak and breakdown of healthcare system in war-torn country

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We continue with our series 'Inside Yemen'. CGTN's Natalie Carney went inside this war-torn country, which is also experiencing one of the world's worst humanitarian crisis right now, to see how the conflict has impacted the healthcare system.

Yemen is currently facing the largest documented cholera epidemic in modern times and experts expect it to get worse. Cholera is a bacterial infectious disease that spreads through contaminated food or water. If not dealt with in an effective and timely manner, it can be deadly.

This is Samira and 3-year-old Omar. They are twins. They both have cholera.

"At first the kids were playing in dirty places, then they got diarrhea. And because the children are playing together, it goes from one to the other."

The family are refugees from Somalia and live in a makeshift space in Aden with no sanitary facilities. The children spend their time outside playing with other neighbourhood kids in bare feet.

Just down the road, 4-year-old Abdulrizza also has cholera. This neighbourhood registers the highest number of cholera cases in all of Aden.

Every day, health advisor Gemel Abdu Mohamed Abu Bakir goes around to educate mothers about proper protective measures, such as hygiene.

JAMEL ABDU MOHAMED ABU BAKIR HEALTH ADVISOR "We enter people's houses to educate them about hygiene, and to tell them if there is a case of diarrhea, they have to come to the hospital to be cured. If you keep them an hour, two hours at home, this hour may be fatal for him. An hour leads to death, half an hour can lead to death."

The cholera ward at Al Sadaka Hospital has seen an increase in patients within the last month.

DR. MANAL SALEM CHOLERA DEPARTMENT, AL SADAKA HOSPITAL "In August it was only 3 to 4 cases a day, but yesterday it was 20 cases just in the morning. The main problem is the lack of water. Water is not available. Even we are suffering from that at home. Water is very rare. We get water only a few hours a day."

More than 1 million people had cholera between 2016 and 2018. Nearly 2400 of them died; a far cry from the rough annual count of 17 and a half thousand registered with the disease prior to the war.

In June a brand-new cholera treatment centre run by Doctors without Boarders was hit by an air strike.

A struggling economy has forced many hospitals to close across the country or work on bare minimum, such as this children's cancer ward.

DR. JAMEL PAEDIATRICIAN WARD "We have a shortage of nurse. We haven't enough doctors. The war has totally affected all aspects of the life. The price of everything here because of this crisis is increasing too much."

Most patients are not able to finish their chemotherapy treatment due to the unaffordability of it or simply access to it.

NASAF HASSAN ALI BREAST CANCER PATIENT "You come here and there is no medicine. There are no needles. You've seen how dirty this place is, the smell, the place stinks. They are not even able to repair the lift. The NGOs give money, but we don't see where that money goes. It doesn't reach us."

The good news is that care and awareness for Cholera is improving across Yemen, but health care in general has become one of the most detrimental casualties of this war.

While the majority is cured of cholera with proper medical care, without an improvement to their living environment many are likely to catch the disease again. And with the heavy rains of winter on the way, the spread of cholera is likely to be more rampant. Natalie Carney CGTN Aden, Yemen