A little girl suffering from cancer in war-torn Yemen has had to have her eye removed. Yusra is considered one of the lucky ones after she was evacuated from the conflict for urgent medical attention. Metro.co.uk first highlighted her plight last year when it was feared the cancer that had already claimed her sight would soon claim her life.

Medics feared the disease was spreading but there are barely any doctors or functioning healthcare facilities after years of war. An international aid effort saw Yusra taken to neighbouring Jordan where she underwent major surgery to remove the tumour. Sadly surgeons at the King Hussein Cancer Centre in Amman said it had been left too late to save her eye. Dr Yacoub Yousef told the BBC it was one of the hardest operations he had ever done.

‘If she came four or five months before now, I could have saved her better. ‘The surgery I would need to do would have been much less aggressive. If she had come early we could have saved the eye. ‘Unfortunately because of the war, they couldn’t come at that time. ‘It is good news that we could save her life. ‘But I wish I could have treated her earlier to save her eye as well.’

Yemen is experiencing the world’s worst humanitarian disaster with at least 10 million people on the brink of famine. Cholera is now spreading ‘like wildfire’ according to the United Nations, who have recorded the third major outbreak of the water-borne bacterial infection since 2015. The Yemeni government hasn’t paid its civil servants for years and most of the trained doctors have left. Yusra, now six, developed cancer in her left eye a few years ago and received chemotherapy at a hospital in the rebel-controlled Yemeni capital of Sana’a.

AFP.