Yemen achieves significant successes in health sector: Health Minister

SANA'A, Feb. 02 (Saba)- The 66th Gulf Cooperation Council Health Ministers'
Conference will be opened next Tuesday in the Yemeni capital Sana'a under the theme:
(primary health care and family medicine is a strategic goal).

The two-day conference comes at a time when Yemen has achieved significant successes
in various aspects of health, particularly in primary health care, although it faces
challenges because of population growth rate at 3.02 per cent and the difficult
geographic nature which disperses the population living in 130000 human gathering.

During the conference, health officials of six Gulf states and Yemen will discussed
a number of issues, including primary health care, central registration of medicine
management, diabetes care, and tobacco control.

In this occasion, Public Health and Population Minister Dr. Abdul Karim Yahya Rassa
said that the conference would have a positive impact on health services in Yemen,
specially the primary health care sector, adding that his ministry managed over
recent years to carry out several health activities that focused on women at
childbearing age and children under five years of age, pointing out they are the two
most affected in Yemen.

"Immunization campaigns and reproductive health services are running as high as 87
per cent as well as the expansion of healthy care services provided to child health
and nutrition. The Ministry implemented last year a healthy care program which
integrated more than 30 per cent of Yemen's 23 million population through visits
paid by healthy teams to villages in order to improve the quality of services
provided in health facilities", affirmed Rassa.

"With regard to disease control, Yemen adopts continuously campaigns to eliminate
neonatal tetanus and eradicate measles and polio and also control the spread of
malaria and schistosomiasis".

In an interview with Saba one day before the opening of the conference, Rassa
confirmed Yemen had got rid of polio, "where there have been no recorded cases in
the past two years", hoping Yemen is to be declared free of the disease by the end
of this year.

"More than 9000000 (nine million) Yemeni children were vaccinated over the past two
years against polio and the coverage ratio reached 97 per cent", said the Minister.

He affirmed that the Ministry worked hard to get rid of bilharzia affecting more
than three million people, where two million people have been treated collectively
in ongoing campaigns implemented over the past year.

Confirming lower incidence of malaria cases in Yemen due to spraying campaigns,
Rassa said that field teams had sprayed over 376000 houses in several provinces of
the country, announcing that the campaigns have succeeded in eliminating malaria
from the island of Socotra.

"Nearly 1500000 women aged 15-45 years have been vaccinated against neonatal tetanus
over the past year", said the Yemeni official at the conclusion of the interview.

YA