Sharjah24 – AFP:A de facto blockade preventing medicines and other life-saving supplies reaching Ethiopia's Tigray is "an insult to our humanity", the chief of the WHO emergency response programme says. The World Health Organisation holds a press conference in Geneva to discuss the spread of the Omicron variant and the blockade in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

The fighting between forces loyal to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and their allies has killed thousands of people and forced several million from their homes since it erupted in November 2020.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director general said, "More transmission means more hospitalisations, more deaths, more people off work including teachers and health workers and more risks of another variant emerging that's even more transmissible and more deadly than Omicron."

Commenting also on this, Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to WHO Director General pointed out, "In thirty years of working on infectious diseases, we have not seen an epidemic curve like this before, certainly not in a pandemic. virus and in the face of a staggering upsurge of disease like that, we are hearing two responses. One group is saying: let this thing immunise the world and another group that is saying and is lead by Maria (WHO technical lead on Covid-19): wear a mask and get vaccinated. If we make the wrong choice, and the first one is the wrong choice, people are going to pay the price."

Michael Ryan, chief of WHO emergency response programme added, "This is an insult to our humanity to allow a situation like this to continue, to allow no access, zero access (to the Tigray region)."

The WHO director general continued, "That's so dreadful and unimaginable, during this time, twenty first century when a government is denying is own people for more than a year food and medicine and the rest to survive."