NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations fears “massive transmission from the community” of COVID-19 in the problematic Tigray region of Ethiopia, fueled by the displacement and collapse of health services, when aid workers finally started accessing the region two months after fighting started.
A new UN report based on the first on-site assessments, it confirms some of the gloomy concerns about some 6 million people in Tigray since the conflict that broke out on 4 November between Ethiopian forces and those in the Tigray region: hospitals were looted, even destroyed , and some fighting continued.
The crisis threatens to destabilize one of Africa’s most powerful and populous countries and attract neighbors like Sudan. Tigray leaders dominated Ethiopia’s government for almost three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took power and set them aside. amid deep reforms that won him the Nobel Peace Prize.
Abiy rejected international “interference” in the conflict, even when the UN and other organizations pleaded for weeks for unrestricted access to Tigray as food, medicine and other supplies ran out.
Now COVID-19 has emerged as the ultimate alarm source. “Only five of the 40 hospitals in Tigray are physically accessible,” says the new UN report released on Thursday. “In addition to those in (capital Tigray) Mekele, the remaining hospitals have been looted and many are reportedly destroyed.” It does not say who made the withdrawal.
COVID-19’s 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 facilitated the massive transmission of the pandemic by the community,” says report.
Ethiopia has one of the largest cases of COVID-19 on the African continent, with more than 127,000 confirmed infections. Although their rate of daily cases has declined in recent weeks, officials have not said whether they are receiving data from the Tigray region.
“Health units outside big cities are not working and those in big cities are partially functioning, without stock of supplies and without health professionals,” says the UN report.
The report also says that the Tigray region remains volatile. “Localized fighting and insecurity continue, with fighting reported in rural areas and on the outskirts of Mekele, Shiraro and Shire, among other places, since last week,” says the document.
The general humanitarian situation is “dire”, says the UN, with “very limited” food supplies and widespread looting reported. “Only locally produced food is available and at increasing prices, making basic goods inaccessible. Most of Tigray’s residents are subsistence farmers and the conflict interrupted the harvest.
Two major camps that house tens of thousands of refugees from neighboring Eritrea remain inaccessible – another source of alarm as the presence of Eritrean troops has been confirmed in Tigray.
No one knows how many thousands of people were killed in the conflict. At least five aid workers were killed.