War in Yemen is pushing health-care facilities to the brink of collapse
Ameen al-Shirahi, his son Yusuf, and Nasser al-Shirahi sit for a portrait in their home in Sanaa, Yemen, on May 29. Nasser is suffering from severe kidney failure, heart problems and brain hemorrhages. (Alex Potter/For The Washington Post)
SANAA, Yemen — Two months of war have devastated Yemen’s health sector, aggravating a dire humanitarian crisis by depriving millions of people of urgent medical care and threatening outbreaks of diseases such as polio and measles, according to doctors and international aid organizations.
Medicines, vaccines and basic medical supplies are running desperately low, while hospitals are scaling back services or closing, they say. Increasingly, they note, medical facilities are being attacked by warring militias and bombed by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition, which launched an air war against Shiite insurgents, known as Houthis, in late March.
“Yemen’s health system is nearing collapse,” said Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, who heads Yemen operations for Doctors Without Borders.
The Arabian Peninsula nation of more than 25 million people was struggling with grinding poverty and lack of access to basic health care before the start of the air campaign. The Saudi-led campaign has fueled fighting on the ground between the Houthis and forces aligned with Yemen’s exiled president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. In February, the Shiite militants toppled Hadi’s government in assaults that continue throughout the country.
Saudi Arabia accuses the Houthis of being proxies of its enemy, Shiite Iran — an allegation the militant group denies.
Yemenis injured in recent fighting in the south of the country receive treatment at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. (Yahya Arhab/European Pressphoto Agency)
Although aid workers are unable to obtain precise data because of the fighting, Ingres noted that the crisis has produced an unspecified, but probably increasing, number of preventable deaths. That includes a 4-year-old boy in a northern province who was unable to get treatment for tonsillitis, Ingres said.
“We are quite sure that people are left to die in their homes because they aren’t able to receive treatment,” she said.
Since late March, 2,000 people have been killed and 8,000 wounded. During that period, the number of people who require urgent medical care has surged to 8.6 million, the World Health Organization said in a statement released last week. But even people who need basic treatment or help such as obstetrical support during childbirth lack access to care, the statement said.
The WHO statement also notes that a national program to fight tuberculosis has been suspended and that “infectious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are spreading. Outbreaks of polio and measles are also serious risks.”
Sadeq al-Jabri, head of the kidney dialysis department at the military hospital in the capital, Sanaa, said the medical facility can hardly perform basic services. The hospital now focuses only on emergency cases and increasingly turns away people because of limited supplies of everything from oxygen and insulin to medicines for kidney dialysis and chemotherapy, he said.
“We’re facing an especially acute shortage of medicines for patients who need kidney dialysis,” he said. “We’re no longer able to treat people adequately.”
Nasser al-Shirahi, 55, was one of the patients turned away by the military hospital. Doctors there told the retired freelance construction worker, who has been on dialysis for two years, that they lacked the medicine to treat him.
A Yemeni child lays in a bed at a hospital in Sanaa on May 12, a day after she was wounded in an airstrike by Saudi-led coalition warplanes. (Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images)
“We’re suffering so much because of this, and we’re afraid our father might die,” said Shirahi’s 25-year-old son, Ameen.
A major problem for medical facilities is a severe shortage of fuel for generators and transportation. The Saudi-led coalition has imposed an air and sea blockade of Yemen, which doctors and aid organizations say is choking off vital medical supplies as well as food and fuel.
Coalition officials say that they allow supplies to enter after they have determined that ships and aircraft are not carrying weapons for rebel forces.
The fighting has damaged electricity plants and power lines that feed most urban centers, depriving communities of power for days at a time. A severe shortage of diesel fuel means that backup generators cannot power medical centers, causing large quantities of vaccines to spoil in idle refrigeration facilities, doctors say. They also say that the gasoline shortage makes it increasingly difficult for medical staff and patients to reach hospitals.
Mareb al-Mahweeti, a vascular surgeon at the military hospital in Sanaa, said the lack of transportation is forcing doctors to take drastic steps.
“Because this is delaying their ability to reach hospitals, we’ve increasingly had to amputate arms and legs because these people are arriving with bullet and shrapnel wounds that have gone untreated for so long,” Mahweeti said.
Since the Saudi bombing campaign began, he has performed 10 amputations on war-wounded patients, which he described as last-resort measures. “We could have saved their limbs if they had received treatment sooner,” he said.
Ali al-Mudhwahi, a senior adviser at the Health Ministry, said a growing number of hospitals across Yemen have been forced to close because of the fighting. This is partly a result of attacks on medical facilities by fighters on both sides of the war. In the southern city of Taiz, he said, militias fighting the Houthis had “looted” hospitals for medical supplies to treat their troops.
In the northern province of Saada, a Houthi stronghold, medical facilities have been “systematically” targeted by coalition airstrikes, he said.
“It’s an utter disaster,” he said.
Brig Gen. Ahmad Asseri, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, declined to comment on allegations that coalition warplanes have been hitting hospitals. He said that he would only address such claims from officials in the Hadi government, which operates in Saudi Arabia.
“We do not comment on rebel and gangster declarations,” he said, referring to officials linked to the Houthi-dominated authority in Sanaa.
Houthi fighters are widely accused in Yemen of carrying out indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas, most notably in the southern city of Aden, which has been ravaged by fighting.
Last month, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, Johannes Van Der Klaauw, accused the Saudi-run coalition of violating international law with “indiscriminate bombing of populated areas.”
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