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EU-funded WHO programme provides vital support to life-saving emergency and trauma care in Yemen
Aden, Yemen 12 May 2022 – With support from the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the World Health Organization (WHO) has supplied vital training, equipment and supplies that is allowing medical facilities to improve trauma, emergency and blood bank services for thousands of Yemeni citizens in conflict zones.
Dr Edries with a new refrigerator for blood supplies“The armed conflict in Yemen has intensified the country’s deep need for emergency and trauma care, especially for people in conflict zones,” said Dr Adham Rashad Ismail, WHO Representative in Yemen. “In the past year, with ECHO’s support, we have trained paramedics and provided essential equipment to trauma teams and blood banks. These efforts have been life-saving in communities across Yemen.”
Under the ECHO-funded WHO programme, a new trauma centre was built in Hajjah governorate to increase capacity to treat wounded or injured people. In collaboration with Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population, WHO also trained 113 front-line health care workers in pre-hospital management of trauma patients. The training, aimed at increasing treatment capacity in high-risk areas, targeted health care workers in the conflict regions of Ibb, Taiz, Albayda, Hajjah, Hodeidah, Amran and Sa’dah governorates.
With ECHO funds, WHO has provided technical support to trauma teams who performed more than 7400 surgeries in hospitals in Hodeidah, Ibb and Aden governorates in 2021. In Hodeidah and Aden, WHO also provided blood banks with new refrigerators, centrifuges and other key supplies and equipment.
Ahmed Edries, Director of Al Jumuhuria hospital laboratories in Aden, said his facility, which has 300 to 400 blood donors a month, was in dire need of more space for blood storage. The new equipment provided by WHO has allowed for increased capacity.
Paramedics receiving training under the ECHO-funded WHO programme.“The refrigerators we were using were old and worn out,” he said. “We also received a new frozen plasma refrigerator, which is needed for burn-related injuries. This support has meant a great deal to our hospital.”
Mohammed Abdulwadood, a paramedic in Sa’dah governorate, said the training he and other paramedics received from WHO last year was “extremely beneficial,” especially because “we were lacking information in some areas.”
“We learned to use the Ambu bag (manual resuscitator) to stabilize patients,” he said. “We learned first aid procedures for accidents and injuries in the context of conflict and emergencies. The training provided us with practical as well as theoretical knowledge.”
In the past seven years, war and economic crisis have deepened Yemen’s humanitarian needs and devastated its health care infrastructure and services.
The majority of Yemen’s 30 million people lack basic necessities and services. More than 20 million have inadequate or no access to health care, while over 15 million Yemenis lack access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and about 16.2 million are food insecure.
Around 4 million Yemenis are internally displaced persons (IDPs), living in even worse conditions. Meanwhile, only about half of the country’s health facilities are fully operational due to the conflict and economic decline.
“ECHO is supporting our assistance to emergency and trauma services in Yemen because the need for them is so extreme,” said Dr Adham. “ECHO is providing WHO with vital financial aid as we do everything in our power to relieve the immense suffering in Yemen.”
Saving Yemeni lives through malaria education and outreach
9 May 2022 - For the past several years, Yemen has been described as the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” due to its protracted war and subsequent economic collapse. This has only been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread of other diseases. In response to the country’s acute and tragic health outcomes, the World Health Organization (WHO), with funding from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSRelief), is supporting the health system throughout Yemen, including national efforts to prevent and control the spread of malaria and dengue fever.
The program’s implementation began in the southern governorates in October of 2020. Twenty-five volunteers were selected from each district to attend a training course, where they were taught how to detect malaria, diagnose it, treat it, and care for infected patients.
Taking the battle against malaria to its source – the mosquito
14 April 2022 Despite significant declines in recent years, malaria still represents a serious public health problem in Yemen – especially against the backdrop of a war that has been raging since 2014, the country’s associated economic collapse, and the healthcare system’s limited capacity throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
WHO and KSrelief join efforts in the fight against child malnutrition in Yemen
13 April 2022 (WHO) – With support from the King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief), the World Health Organization (WHO) has begun providing essential medicines, equipment, and training to eight high-priority hospitals in Yemen for treating severe acute malnutrition among children under the age of five.
WHO will support the pediatric units of these hospitals with essential medicines and equipment, training of health workers, and 192 PED/SAM kits for treating childhood illnesses including severe acute malnutrition with medical complications.
“This is a life-saving intervention for thousands of children, to strengthen nutrition into child health,” said Dr Adham Rashad Ismail Abdel-Moneim, WHO Representative to Yemen. “In addition to providing vital support to hospitals treating suffering children, the programme has also strengthened knowledge within communities about nutritional and health needs of infants and young children. This will help reduce morbidity and mortality related to malnutrition.”
Under the programme, nutrition and health care knowledge for children, adolescents and mothers will be spread through social media, TV, radio, and other communication channels to more than 3 million people in Yemeni districts faced with overall acute malnutrition rates of more than 15% -- the WHO emergency threshold. The programme will directly benefit some 18,000 children to be treated at these eight hospitals during the next nine months. Health worker knowledge and technical competencies will also be boosted for treating and mitigating recurrence of severe acute malnutrition cases among Yemeni infants and children. Household child caregivers will also be instructed in Infection prevention control (IPC) and COVID-19 control measures.
Yemen’s eight-year civil conflict and resulting economic and infrastructure collapse have heightened the country’s risk of famine, with two-thirds of Yemen’s districts now classified as “pre-famine” by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).
Last year, WHO supported 109 TFCs with vital medical and laboratory supplies as well as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services. These TFCs provided life-saving nutrition services to about 21,000 infants and children. Some 94% of infants and children treated at the TFCs survived, and only 2% are known to have relapsed.
“WHO-Yemen has and will continue to focus on doing whatever we can to reduce the tremendous suffering that accompanies catastrophic levels of malnutrition in Yemen,” Dr Abdel-Moneim concluded.
