Yemen
After more than seven years of conflict, Yemen remains the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Millions of people lack access to basic health care, and less than half of the country’s health facilities are fully functional. Over the course of the pandemic, healthcare needs have increased due to widespread acute malnutrition, ongoing conflict, poverty, and COVID-19.
Since 2017, MedGlobal has worked in Yemen to build health capacity through facility improvement and medical supply distribution, provide health services to vulnerable communes, and support local health workers through health training and education.
2.27
M
people supported
73,577
+
free health consultations offered in 2021
477
health workers trained in 2021
40
+
health facilities supported
MedGlobal’s Response in Yemen
In coordination with local partners Rahma Worldwide and Life Foundation, MedGlobal has provided 25 hospitals, rural health facilities, and COVID-19 isolation centers in the most hard-to-reach areas with supplies, critical equipment, medications, and PPE. Supplies and masks to protect health staff are particularly important in Yemen, where there are only 10 health workers for every 10,000 people, less than half of the WHO benchmark for basic health coverage. MedGlobal also provided 139 oxygen cylinders to treat COVID-19 patients to several hospitals in 2020. Oxygen is a critical part of the emergency response to COVID-19, which took a dire toll on Yemen – the official COVID-19 mortality rate in Yemen was over 5 times the global average in 2020. To build hospital capacity, MedGlobal provided critical medicine, machines, hospital beds and other supplies to hospitals around the country.
In addition to COVID-19, Yemen faces a dire hunger crisis. In response to increasing malnutrition rates, MedGlobal has distributed nutritious food baskets to five IDPs camps in Al Hudaydah governorate, and to 6,500 IDPs across Aden and Marib.
In late April 2021, MedGlobal launched a Mobile Health Teams program to deliver free primary health services to underserved, hard-to-reach areas of the Taiz governorate. In coordination with local health facilities, the mobile teams have provided over 36,000 health consultations, including 3,000 nutrition screenings and 4,600 maternal health consultations, lab work, medications, and follow-up care to households that lack access to health services.
In December 2021, MedGlobal and Bridge to Health launched a point-of-care ultrasound project in Yemen, supported by Creating Hope in Conflict: a Humanitarian Grand Challenge. The project seeks to train local health physicians on lung, obstetric, and trauma point-of-care ultrasound at two hospitals in Hadhramout to improve diagnostic techniques and overall patient outcomes.
“The situation in Yemen worsens each day. More than half of the hospitals are not functional, and the COVID-19 and hunger crises are overwhelming the fragile health system. Our work here is critical.”
– Dr. Mohammed Abass, MedGlobal Yemen Program Manager
Our work in Yemen is changing lives
