Ethiopian crisis: Tigray conflict is a health crisis for 6 million people: WHO chief
Geneva, Switzerland (PANA) - The Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) urged the international community and the media on Wednesday to give the crisis in Ethiopia “the attention it deserves”.
Highlighting that there is no other situation globally in which six million had been kept under siege for almost two years, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that there is a very narrow window to prevent genocide in Tigray.
“Yes, I’m from Tigray, and yes, this affects me personally. I don’t pretend it doesn’t. Most of my relatives are in the most affected areas, more than 90 per cent of them,” he acknowledged during his regular press conference in Geneva.
“But my job is to draw the world’s attention to crises that threaten the health of people wherever they are. This is a health crisis for six million people, and the world is not paying enough attention,” he underscored.
The WHO chief echoed the words used by the UN Secretary-General earlier this week, in which he said that the situation in Ethiopia is “spiralling out of control”.
“Hostilities in Tigray must end now – including the immediate withdrawal and disengagement of Eritrean armed forces from Ethiopia,” he said.
Dr. Tedros highlighted that banking, fuel, food, electricity and health care are being used as weapons of war, while media coverage is also not allowed and “destruction of civilians” is taking place in darkness.
“There are no services for tuberculosis, HIV, diabetes, hypertension and more – those diseases, which are treatable elsewhere, are now a death sentence in Tigray,” he warned, adding that even people who have money are starving, because they can’t access it.
-0- PANA MA 20Oct2022
