And now, some news you can use, about Yemen.

The Republic of Yemen is a sovereign state at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula.

For at least 7000 years, Yemen has been a crossroads of cultures with a strategic location in terms of trade on the west of the Arabian Peninsula.

The closest I ever got to Yemen was Israel in 2000 and Ethiopia in 2012. When I was in Israel I thought a lot about the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but don’t recall thinking about Yemen.

When I was in Ethiopia, I was flabbergasted by the diversity within the country. There were clearly people there from north, south, east, and west Africa, as well as the Middle East and around the world. But again, I didn’t think much about Yemen, despite its proximity.

I started paying attention to Yemen a few years ago but since I didn’t know anyone from there, I never wrote about it. But now, the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Yemen has captured my attention. There are significant obstacles to for journalists hoping to access Sana’a and other areas of the country. To learn more about Yemen, I suggest following Jane Ferguson, a Beirut-based special correspondent, on Twitter.

From an infectious diseases perspective, there are many emergencies in Yemen, including pathogens spread by the water route (i.e.cholera), as well as airborne route (i.e. tuberculosis).