REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

Alessandra Vellucci, Director of the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, chaired the briefing attended by the spokesperson for the World Health Organization.

Syria

On behalf of the Office of the Special Envoy for Syria (OSE), Alessandra Vellucci, for the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, said the Special Envoy for Syria would be briefing the UN Security Council today, at 9.45 a.m. EST; the briefing would be webcast.

Yemen

Christian Lindmeier, for the World Health Organization (WHO), introduced Dr. Ahmed Zouiten, Senior Emergency Advisor for Yemen, WHO, who was leading WHO’s emergency response in Yemen on the ground and had just come back from there. Dr Zouiten said he had spent a month in Yemen leading the health emergency response in the country, including the response to cholera. Cholera was endemic in Yemen, so this was not the first time that there was an outbreak, only that the past outbreaks were limited in time and in the number of cases. However, over two years of conflict in Yemen had weakened the water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) infrastructure and had destroyed many of the infrastructures that were already in a weak situation. The conflict had also seriously affected the health sector. Only about 45 per cent of health facilities were now functioning in Yemen. Health workers had not regularly received their salaries since September 2017. That represented a perfect storm for cholera.

Today, it was exactly two months since the second wave of cholera had started on 27 April. As of this morning 218,798 cases had been registered. Some 1,400 suspected deaths related to cholera had also been registered, with a case fatality rate of 0.6 per cent, which was below the accepted threshold for cholera of 1 per cent. The good news was that some reduction in the numbers of suspected cases had been seen in the past week. WHO was taking this with much caution, as around the time of the Eid holiday, many people were travelling, which could have prevented them from going to hospitals, but the hope was that reduction was also due to efforts by WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and their partners in the health cluster. In the past two months, the partners had started to scale up massively their operations, not only in the capital, but in many of the affected governorates, and especially UNICEF and WHO had stood up to support the health authorities and health partners since the start of the epidemic.

The efforts consented as part of the cholera response seemed to start to yield results, notably as the case fatality rate was going down every week. Also, the population was responding more effectively to cholera, coming earlier to hospitals and oral rehydration points. WHO was hoping to limit severe cases, to be as close as possible to the population and to open ten oral rehydration points for every treatment centre as part of a decentralization of the response. Risk communication was a key focus of the response, to empower the population to protect themselves and their families. WHO was also scaling up its efforts in case management and increasing its attention to the response in the WASH sector (together with UNICEF) by chlorinating water sources, distributing aqua tabs and chlorine for water purification, and scaling up logistics.

This was also being done in coordination with many national and international NGOs on the national and sub-national (governorate) level. A cholera task force at the national and sub-national level was operational, and WHO had also created emergency operation centres in all of the governorates, that were operating today as command centres for the response.

In response to questions, Dr Zouiten said that there was reason to believe that the number of cases would start to go down due to efforts made by WHO, UNICEF and partners in terms of prevention and risk communication. However, the reduction might also be due to the end of Ramadan and the fact that people had travelled from governorate to governorate, from city to city, and not gone to hospitals. Whether the decline was real could be confirmed in the coming week or two.

He also said there was a backlog with reporting every day, which could explain big increases sometimes occurring from one day to the next; those were not actually daily increases but information from previous days coming into the database. On average, about 3,500 cases per day had been recorded in the first two weeks of Ramadan, and about 5,000 cases per day in the last two weeks of Ramadan. In a normal epidemic the curve went up and down, and WHO did not want to speculate on how far and how soon it would go down. Efforts were being made to make the curve descend as fast and as much as possible.

The case fatality rate had started in the first week of the epidemic at about 1.7 per cent and was now down to 0.6 per cent. That meant that people who went to the facilities were being treated effectively. The case fatality rate was an important indicator of the effectiveness of the response.

Dr Zouiten also said that towards the beginning of the month of Ramadan there were about 40,000 – 41,000 cases every week. The past week had been the first week with a decline: 39,000 cases versus about 42,000 in the previous week. But a decline had to be noted in a consistent manner over two or three weeks in order to be confirmed as such.

Asked about the effect of the month of Ramadan on the number of cases, Dr Zouiten said more severe cases had been coming to the hospitals as the dehydration levels were double, due to fasting and to cholera. However, the main concern with the end of Ramadan was with people travelling from governorate to governorate, which implied further transmission of the illness and further vulnerability of populations. The reduction in numbers could mean that the milder cases had not gone to hospitals due to the travel, which was why much caution was required in interpreting the figures.

Conference on Cyprus

Ms. Vellucci reminded the press of a curtain-raiser press conference ahead of the Conference on Cyprus, today, 27 June at 11 a.m. in Room III, with Espen Barth Eide, Special Advisor of the Secretary-General for Cyprus. She also confirmed that press pools for photo sprays would be organized to cover arrivals and the start of the conference and that UNTV and UN Photo would also be fully covering the event and would provide images to everybody.

Geneva Events and Announcements

Alessandra Vellucci, for the United Nations Information Service in Geneva, said that the Conference on Disarmament meeting planned for this morning had been cancelled.

The webcast for this briefing is available here: http://bit.ly/unog270617