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Dr Ahmed Al-Soofi: serving with excellence on the front lines of Yemen’s health crisis
30 December 2021 - It was late in the evening on 7 December 2021 when Dr Ahmed Al-Soofi received an email unlike any other in his 16 years of working with WHO in Yemen.
"It was the biggest surprise of my life!" said Dr Ahmed. "At first I didn’t understand it. Then I made two phone calls to my mother and my wife. I told them it would not have been possible without their love and support. I can’t explain how I felt. I was so happy."
Health workers in Yemen fight for the lives of COVID-19 patients
28 December 2021 - "Imagine becoming like family for a complete stranger, like everything they have in life and like their lifeline. During my work for the COVID-19 response, we work tirelessly to save the lives of these patients and offer them care and support in their fight against the disease," says Fadhl Ismail, a health worker in the Al Amal isolation centre in Aden since the first COVID-19 wave in March 2020.
After 19 years of waiting, Al-Sadaqah Hospital in Yemen has a new x-ray machine thanks to WHO and World Bank
General Director of Al-Sadaqah Hospital Dr Kefaya Al-Gazaie, Manager of the Radiology Department Dhikra Abdulraheem and WHO Technical Officer Dr Amgad Abdulqawi discuss the impact that the new digital x-ray machine will have on the population of Aden and surrounding governoratesAden, 5 December 2021 – With the crisis in Yemen profoundly impacting the country's health system, WHO is strengthening service delivery at hospitals across the country through the World Bank-supported Emergency Health and Nutrition Project (EHNP). One such facility is Al-Sadaqah Hospital in Aden where, after 19 years of relying on an increasingly outdated and underperforming x-ray machine, the hospital staff finally received a new one.
Hospitals in Yemen are struggling to meet the increasing demands for essential care, coupled with deteriorating infrastructure, equipment and services. "Since 2002, we had been working with another x-ray machine that insufficiently diagnosed cases, forcing many patients to go to an expensive private clinic,” said Dhikra Abdulraheem, Manager of the Hospital’s Radiology Department.
The state-of-the art, digital x-ray machine is already enabling the hospital’s pediatric department to better treat a growing influx of patients. “Now, instead of paying five times more at a private clinic, they can receive the same accurate diagnosis at a much more affordable cost,” added Abdulraheem.
Improved image diagnostic capacity will enable doctors to effectively detect severe acute lower respiratory tract infections, which will reduce the risk of infection-related mortality in children under five.
Abdulraheem elaborated that the machine will also diagnose adult cases, which is key to meeting the needs of an ever-growing number of patients -- including internally displaced people -- hailing from many different governorates. “We have suffered a long time, especially during the last four years of this seven-year conflict,” added Abdulraheem, “Now, thanks to the arrival of this new x-ray machine, we can finally treat more patients.”
COVID-19 treatment centres: the first line of defense in saving Yemeni lives
15 December 2021 - Thirty-eight-year-old Wajdi Sweidan, a lab technician at Tarim Hospital, in Hadramout, contracted COVID-19 while he was taking samples from a patient. After recovering, his family tried to convince him to stop working at the centre, but he was determined to help patients get through the “harshest illness” he has ever experienced.
