Forgotten Dairies
A COVID-19 outbreak in Yemen would be a catastrophe -By Radhya Almutawakel
At a time when the world is scrambling to respond to COVID-19 and ensure that hospitals can treat all patients, Yemen has entered the sixth year of a war that has all but decimated its healthcare system.
The new threats of the virus will complicate an
already disastrous and entirely man-made humanitarian crisis. The
multiparty war that has ravaged Yemen the past five years has not spared
hospitals or health workers the violence and destruction.
Mwatana for Human Rights, the organisation I founded in in 2007, documented 120 attacks on health facilities and medical personnel
by all parties to the conflict in Yemen between 2015 and 2018. They
resulted in the death of 96 civilians and health workers and wounded
hundreds of others.
In a report released
in March by Mwatana for Human Rights and US-based organisation
Physicians for Human Rights, we illustrate how these attacks were
carried out and how they have contributed to the disastrous humanitarian
situation in Yemen. This is just a snapshot, with the actual number of
attacks on health facilities likely being much higher.
The
Saudi and Emirati-led coalition, the Houthi armed group, and the
internationally recognised government of Yemen have all contributed to
the collapse of the healthcare system. They have launched aerial or
ground attacks on known, occupied medical facilities, looted medical
supplies, and assaulted medical personnel, among other violations.
What I saw when I visited hospitals in the city of Taiz and the capital Sanaa in 2015was
heartbreaking. The Republican Public Hospital in Taiz was empty, like a
ghost house. It was in an area that soon became the site of armed
clashes between Houthi and forces loyal to the late Yemeni President Ali
Abdullah Saleh on one side and “public resistance” forces affiliated
with the government of Yemen on the other.
In addition to being caught in the crossfire,
hospitals across Taiz were suffering from shortages of oxygen to perform
basic operations due to the siege imposed by Houthi and Saleh forces.
In Sanaa, the hospitals I visited were not equipped to treat the large
numbers of people injured in Saudi/UAE-led coalition air attacks. I
still remember the scene of wounded people filling the hallways of
understaffed hospitals. I will never forget the overwhelmed doctors and
nurses, unable to respond adequately and feeling helpless due to the
lack of essential medical equipment.
By the end of 2016, just one year into the war, more than half of Yemen’s health facilities closed and those that remained operational lacked specialists, essential equipment, and medicines.
The few remaining and barely functional medical
centres were often occupied and militarised by parties to the conflict,
thereby weaponising and co-opting access to healthcare. These acts
violated the medical principle of non-discriminatory healthcare
provision and exposed many of these structures to the risk of losing
their protected status under the laws of armed conflict.
All
parties to the conflict have threatened, injured, abducted, detained,
and killed health workers. This hostile environment led almost all
foreign medical professionals, who comprised approximately 25
percent of the health workforce before the escalation of the conflict,
to flee the country, putting further strain on the healthcare system.
Today, Yemen is facing a tremendous shortage of medical professionals,
with only 10 health workers per 10,000 people – less than half of the
minimum ratio recommended by the World Health Organization to provide
the most basic health coverage to a population of this size.
The destruction of health facilities and the shortage of medical
professionals have all contributed to a catastrophic situation for
civilians in Yemen. This explains why Yemenis suffered an outbreak of an easily preventable disease, cholera.
Parties to the conflict in Yemen must cease attacking and weaponising
healthcare across the country and should immediately conduct
investigations into attacks to ensure accountability for crimes
committed, and offer redress to victims.
In Yemen, our worst
fears will likely become a reality: another epidemic. While novel to the
entire world, the disease may be particularly deadly to countries in
conflict like Yemen. A friend of mine who lives in Sanaatold me: “If Coronavirus arrives in Yemen, we should just dig our graves and wait quietly for death.”
The spread of coronavirus anywhere is a threat to everyone. While
countries shore up their own health systems to battle coronavirus, they
must not ignore the plight of Yemenis who are already under attack.