Briefly describe the infectious disease and long-term condition, and in both cases summarise the prevalence and causes of this condition/issue in your chosen country context: Infectious Disease And Long Term Conditions Assignment, UOK, UK

Assessment Brief

1. Briefly describe the infectious disease and long-term condition, and in both cases summarise the prevalence and causes of this condition/issue in your chosen country context.
2. Critically examine why these conditions present a public health problem; considering the physical, psychological, and socio/economic impacts.
3. Critically assess how these conditions are being addressed by public health organizations/institutions and policies in your chosen country. What are the challenges which remain to be addressed?

• You may use examples from other countries to support your assessment of the situation facing your chosen country, where appropriate.
• All data and claims must be supported with reference to relevant evidence and literature.
• Further guidance about the report will be available in class and on the module Blackboard site.

Introduction

The Republic of Yemenis is located at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia with a total population of 27.5 million. Since 2011, Yemen has suffered several political conflicts which culminated in the civil war in 2015 as the Houthis took over Sana’a, the capital, and controlled much of the north and west of the country (BBC,2018).

According to the United Nations (UN), Yemen is currently suffering from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis as many people do not have the essentials to survive; like food, safe drinking water, and shelter. Thousands of schools and health facilities have been destroyed (Unicef USA, 2018). As the conflict expands, the crisis continues to be driven by weak governance, environmental stress, pandemics, lack of essential resources, poverty, and political instability. All this has made the efforts of humanitarian and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)more challenging( Kandeh, 2015).

Cholera and childhood malnutrition are now very serious public health problems in Yemen. who reported a cholera outbreak in October 2016 specifically in Sana’a. In 2017, the number of cases increased rapidly after the shutdown of the sewage system in Sanaa as witnessed by health workers(WHO,2017). Cholera spread widely, mostly in the conflict area in the north side (WHO,2018a). This outbreak has now become the largest in epidemiologically recorded history with more than 1.2 million cases since the beginning of the outbreak (Federspiel & Ali, 2018). Although the Haiti outbreak was the largest since records began in 1949with 815,000 cases of cholera between the years 2010 and 2017, Yemen has already exceeded that number in just six months (Lyons, 2018). According to the World Food Programme, even before the war, Yemen had one of the highest rates of malnutrition globally. With the ongoing conflict, hunger and malnutrition rose dramatically(Eshaq et al.,2017). 1.8 million children in Yemen today suffer from malnutrition and 400,000 Yemeni children are at risk of death due to severe malnutrition(SAM) (Unicef, 2018a).