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Eight years of prolonged conflict in Yemen leave over 20 million people in need of urgent health assistance
Cairo, 25 March 2023 – With 8 years of protracted conflict and humanitarian crisis, over two thirds of Yemen’s population – 21.6 million people – are in acute need of humanitarian assistance, including over 20 million people requiring urgent health assistance.
The country’s health system continues to fall short of meeting the population’s needs. Only 54% of health facilities are fully functioning, while 46% are only partially operating or entirely out of service.
“The world cannot continue to ignore Yemen. We call on expanded and sustained international support to health systems and the brave frontline health workers. I witnessed firsthand the suffering, illness and death of innocent civilians caught up in this crisis when I visited the country. Our ultimate goal is to build safer and healthier future for all Yemenis. Yet health cannot be attained without peace. Peace is possible and it is the only solution, but it needs everyone’s commitment,” says Dr Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean.
Overstretched health facilities are barely providing the most basic services as they struggle with lack of staff, funds, electricity, medicines, supplies and medical equipment.
Health workers are paid less than in previous years due to the severe funding shortfall, leaving health facilities facing a continuous decline in health capacities. Yemeni health workers have been serving selflessly. Millions of children and families depend on them for hope, healing and survival.
The war – with its distressing stories of the destruction of homes, loss of lives, youth disabled, displacement and economic deterioration, compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, cholera and other outbreaks, and recurrent natural disasters – has taken an enormous toll on people's resilience and their mental health.
The World Health Organization (WHO), together with its Health Cluster partners in Yemen, is appealing for US$ 392 million to reach 12.9 million people with essential health assistance in 2023.
WHO’s longstanding response, with the support of donors and partners, to the health crisis in Yemen has been instrumental in saving lives and averting the imminent collapse of the health system through an integrated approach to sustaining priority health interventions.
These include: supporting over 4500 health care facilities and national laboratories with supplies, medicines, fuel, water, sanitation and hygiene services; coordinating the national Health Cluster; keeping therapeutic feeding centres operational; and strengthening disease surveillance to respond to all infectious disease outbreaks.
Moreover, WHO has been able to improve the delivery of mental health and psychosocial support services. Since 2021, more than 3500 health care staff, first responders, frontline workers, schoolteachers and child protection and gender-based violence case managers have been trained in mental health and psychosocial support.
WHO remains fully committed to supporting the health and welfare of the Yemeni people under its regional vision of health for all by all, and calls for solidarity and action. During a period of multiple crises and pressing needs across the Region and the planet, WHO appeals for greater attention to the continued plight of the people of Yemen and calls for more assistance to address one of the world’s most neglected crisis.
Media contacts:
Inas Hamam
Emergency Communication Manager
WHO Regional Offic for the Eastern Mediterranean
Kevin Cook
Communication Advisor
WHO Yemen
Bravery and resilience in the face of adversity
The birth of a baby girl Houria in Qafl Shammar Hospital in Hajjah governorate while she is healthy and weighs 3 kg. Credit: INTERSOS23 March 2023 – For many Yemeni women who are pregnant, breastfeeding and displaced by conflict, hard-to-reach and struggling hospitals are still working to save their lives, and deliver new ones.
When Horia, 37, began experiencing life-threatening complications due to a high-risk pregnancy, she learned that the one health facility near to her village was inadequately staffed and equipped to help her.
Horia’s family urged her to let them take her to the ER of Qafl Shamer hospital in the Qafl Shamer district of Hajjah governorate.
Horia made it to the hospital, she arrived suffering increasingly strong and distressing labour pains.
Upon arrival Horia was immediately attended to by a specialized doctor who is supported by the project. He performed a rapid diagnosis and emergency C-section that delivered a healthy 3 kg baby girl into Horia’s waiting arms.
“Our lives are so difficult now, and the support I received here meant so much to us,” said Horia during a follow-up visit to the hospital.
Qafl Al Sahmer hospital is supported to provide emergency and secondary health care services to some of the most vulnerable, conflict-affected and internally displaced people (IDPs) in Hajja governorate, including supporting 34 emergency staff with incentive payments.
Eight years of armed conflict in Yemen has devastated the country’s health care system to the point that most vulnerable communities, including Horia, lack access to even the most basic and essential services. In Qafl Shamer district of Hajjah governorate where Horia and her family reside, there are nearly 566 000 IDPs, while just over half of all health facilities across the governorate either closed or only partially functioning. For many or most IDPs, living conditions are dire, at best.
In partnership with INTERSOS, and with generous funding from the Government of Germany, WHO is leading the health response in Yemen to protect essential health services for the most vulnerable and their communities and responding to the health consequences of the conflict and severe economic downturn.
Specialized health interventions managed by WHO with INTERSOS aim to support women like Horia, those facing increased risk of death and severe complications during childbirth due to a lack of access to essential health care.
WHO’s partnership with INTERSOS dates to 2018, and is continuing to strengthen essential health services while improving their availability to most vulnerable persons, through the Minimum Services Package (MSP), a health service delivery mechanism which focuses on 8 priority health care services, targeting health facilities at the district level.
To date, the health of over 13 500 Yemeni people has been supported through WHO’s partnership with INTERSOS, including 3200 vulnerable and at-risk women and around 8000 children.
The heroic efforts of Yemen’s healthcare workers: selflessly serving to advance health for all
9 March 2023 – As Yemeni women face extreme hardships linked to prolonged conflict, many are serving selflessly, under enormous pressures, at badly overstretched health facilities where millions of children and families depend on them for hope, healing and survival.
According to the UN’s Yemen Humanitarian Needs Overview 2023 (HNO), severe health threats and limited access to health services pose greatest risks to children and women who are highly vulnerable to malnutrition and preventable diseases.
In 2021, Yemen ranked 155th of 156 countries on the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index. Subject to restricted movements, high exposure to gender-based violence (GBV), and other major challenges, women as well as girls with disabilities are among most-marginalized Yemenis who are also least reachable by healthcare and humanitarian workers.
For Yemen’s children, the path to a polio diagnosis starts with a remarkable road trip
Dr Mohammed Sharafulddin, AFPl surveillance coordinator in Al Mahaweet governorate, receiving and handling a stool sample.2 March 2023 – Stopping any polio outbreak starts with vaccine procurement, transport by airplanes and trucks, distribution involving complex logistics, and eventually the oral administration of the vaccine by drops in the mouths of every eligible child.
However, there is another, lesser known but equally important process that must also take place to halt transmission of the poliovirus. It begins with a humble thumb sized stool sample taken from a child with acute flaccid paralysis (AFP), then delivered to the nearest laboratory that can test the sample specifically for poliovirus.
But nowhere in Yemen is there any such laboratory. So the long and arduous journey of any stool sample from a Yemeni child to receiving laboratory can take up to several days – following an easterly route, to the neighbouring country of Oman.
An explanation of how stool samples are transported over such a distance starts with why: monitoring children under 15 years of age for signs of AFP, which is the most common sign of poliovirus infection. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has set a benchmark of at least three AFP cases per 100 000 children under 15 years of age, a standard that Yemen has consistently met, thanks to the effectiveness of its surveillance system. This achievement is all the more remarkable considering that Yemen is entering its ninth year of internal conflict, with resulting population displacements, widespread food and fuel shortages, and a devastated health system (in which only 46%of hospitals and health facilities are only partially functioning or completely out of service).
