AP investigation: Corruption undermined a campaign to fight the world’s worst outbreak of cholera in Yemen.
FILE - In this July 1, 2017 file photo, a man is treated for suspected cholera infection at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. An Associated Press investigation finds that Yemen’s massive cholera epidemic was aggravated by corruption and official intransigence. The investigation has found that both the Iranian-backed Houthis rebels and their main adversary in the war -- the U.S.- and Saudi-backed government that controls southern Yemen -- impeded efforts by relief groups to stem the epidemic.
The cancellation of the shipment was just one of the setbacks that aid agencies faced in battling the cholera epidemic, which has killed nearly 3,000 Yemenis. “The Houthis are taking advantage of U.N. weakness,” the official said. “Corruption or aid diversion and all of this are because of the U.N.’s weak position.” Relief workers know that if the U.N. speaks out, the official said, “their visas will be denied and they would not be allowed back in the country.”
“What is important is that the vaccines that needed to get in have ultimately gone in and have reached the people who needed to be vaccinated,” he said. “Has this been simple and easy? Absolutely not. Each shipment has been problematic to get in because of the long approval time” and because of “skepticism among the authorities on both sides” about the value of cholera vaccines.
When U.N. officials tried to rush in oral vaccines to halt the spread, some Houthi officials claimed vaccines were ineffective. A few circulated messages on social media asserting that vaccines could be harmful to children. Four aid officials and a former Houthi health official said that some rebel leaders suggested that the vaccination plan was a plot by the U.S. and Israel to use Yemenis as guinea pigs.
At the last minute, hard-liners in the Houthi-controlled Health Ministry told the U.N. they would not allow the plane to land. Taher was sent to a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the city of Abs. She soon developed complications and was moved to another hospital nearby. It was there, in September 2017, that she died. Her child was born alive but died four days later.Taher was one of 16 people reported to have died from cholera in her district in Hajjah. Hundreds more were infected.
As a non-Houthi, bin Hafez didn’t have the power to overrule the decisions of the two deputies who supposedly were working under him. He wrote a letter to the prime minister of the Houthi-controlled government, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour, detailing how the delivery of vaccines had been once again been put off.
But some of the vaccination teams existed only on paper and many workers on the teams never received the full stipends budgeted for them under the program, two aid officials told the AP. The two officials said authorities in the south prevented aid workers from visiting the districts where immunization campaigns were taking place, making it impossible for them to monitor what was happening on the ground and verify how aid money was being used.
Some centers set up to treat cholera victims weren’t functional even though UNICEF and the WHO had provided funding to government authorities and nongovermental groups to cover costs of setting them up and running them, according to two aid officials familiar with the centers. Still, even with overreporting, the outbreak of cholera was “massive,” Paul B. Spiegel, the lead author of the study and director of the university’s Center for Humanitarian Health, told the AP.
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