NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – UN fears “massive community transmission” of COVID-19 in Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region fueled by the displacement and collapse of health services as humanitarian workers finally begin to enter the region two months after the fighting began.
A new UN report based on initial field assessments, it confirms some of the most serious concerns around Tigray’s 6 million people since the conflict broke out on November 4 between Ethiopian and Tigray region forces: hospitals have been looted, even destroyed, and some fighting continues.
The crisis has threatened to destabilize one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries and attract neighbors like Sudan. Tigray’s leaders dominated the Ethiopian government for nearly three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power and set them aside amid reforms that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Abiy has rejected international “interference” in the conflict, even as the UN and others advocated for weeks for unhindered access to Tigray as food, medicines and other supplies ran out.
Now COVID-19 has emerged as the ultimate source of alarm. “Only five out of 40 Tigray hospitals are physically accessible,” the new UN report released Thursday says. “Apart from those in Mekele (the capital of the Tigray), the remaining hospitals are looted and many are supposedly destroyed.” He does not say who did the looting.
COVID-19 surveillance and control work was interrupted for more than a month in Tigray and, along with the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, “it is feared that it has facilitated the mass community transmission of the pandemic,” he says. the report.
Ethiopia has one of the highest COVID-19 cases on the African continent with more than 127,000 confirmed infections. Although the daily case rate has declined in recent weeks, officials have not said whether they have received data from the Tigray region.
“Sanitary facilities outside major cities are not functional and those in major cities are partially operational, with a limited supply of supplies and the absence of medical personnel,” the UN report says.
The report also says the Tigray region remains volatile. “Localized fighting and insecurity continue, with fighting recorded in rural areas and on the outskirts of Mekele, Shiraro and Shire, among other places, since last week,” he says.
The overall humanitarian situation is “terrible,” the UN says, with “very limited” food supplies and reports of widespread looting. “There are only locally produced food products available at rising prices, which makes commodities unaffordable.” Most Tigray residents are subsistence farmers and the conflict disrupted the harvest.
It is impossible to reach two major camps that house tens of thousands of refugees from nearby Eritrea, another source of alarm such as the presence of Eritrean troops. has been confirmed in Tigray.
No one knows how many thousands of people have died in the conflict. At least five humanitarian workers have been killed.