WHO says 42 Taiz health facilities face severe shortages as dialysis sessions are cut
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — Hospitals across Taiz governorate face severe shortages of fuel, oxygen and medicines three weeks into a Houthi blockade of the city, the World Health Organization said.
WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier gave the warning at a UN briefing in Geneva on October 23. He said 42 health facilities in Taiz city had reported acute shortages of essential supplies.
Hospitals and ambulances in the governorate need at least 156,000 litres of fuel a month, according to the WHO.
The agency said diesel shortages also threaten oxygen production, water pumping, vaccine refrigeration and sanitation.
The blockade began in the first week of October, after Houthi forces advanced in the Taiz countryside. It closed the main road linking the city to Aden.
Taiz was held under a complete Houthi siege between 2015 and 2016.
At the Republican Hospital, the dialysis centre has cut treatment sessions from four hours to two and a half, its director said.
Dr Essam Mahyoub Dahan said a complete shutdown of the centre could come within days. The centre treats 270 patients who receive dialysis regularly.
Stocks of specialised dialysis solutions are close to running out, Dahan said. The health ministry normally delivers them every three months, and the consignment due early in October did not arrive.
Omar Mukhtar Hammoud, 16, has kidney failure and depends on the centre for treatment, Al Jazeera reported from the hospital.
“The only solution is to end the siege and return things to the way they were,” Dahan said.
Abdul Badi Abdulwuhab, 53, told Al Jazeera that the shortened sessions leave him weak. Dahan said the patient’s condition had worsened since the cuts.
A statement from the Taiz health office on October 12 said 1,110 kidney failure patients across the governorate were at risk. Hospitals in the governorate provide about 210 dialysis sessions a day, it said.
The same statement warned that fuel restrictions could shut down medical oxygen production plants.
Taysir al-Samei, the health office’s media officer, said operating theatres, inpatient wards, intensive care units and incubators for premature babies all depend on that oxygen.
Al-Samei said some hospitals could stop providing services within days if conditions did not change.
The Republican Hospital holds no reserve diesel, said Dr Shaheed al-Ameri, its deputy director-general for technical affairs.
Al-Ameri said the hospital’s stocks ran out early in the blockade. It now buys diesel on the black market almost daily, at about five times the price charged before the roads closed.
Some departments, including essential units, have suspended work, he said.
Laboratory reagents at the hospital have fallen to between 10 and 15 percent of previous levels, according to al-Ameri. About half the medicines it normally stocks are unavailable, and the price of those still held has doubled.
Much of the governorate’s electricity infrastructure was destroyed earlier in the war and has not been rebuilt, leaving hospitals dependent on generators.
Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN humanitarian affairs office, told the same briefing that Taiz had been cut off for 20 days.
Water production has fallen by about half, Laerke said, and trucked water prices have tripled.
The World Food Programme put the number cut off from assistance at more than 800,000, about 600,000 of them dependent on aid, its spokesperson Azfar Deen said.
Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on October 20 that he was alarmed at the encirclement of Taiz by the de facto authorities.
Türk said the closure of the only supply route linking Taiz to Aden was placing civilians at grave risk. He called for relief to be allowed in immediately, and for civilians who wish to leave to be able to do so.
The office said it had monitored restrictions on safe access to water and other essential goods along the Al-Dhabab route into the city. It said commodity prices in Taiz had multiplied, leaving many residents unable to afford food and other basic necessities.
Türk urged all parties to refrain from using explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas. He said the risk to civilians rises as the fighting moves closer to densely populated districts.
He renewed calls for the de facto authorities to release detained United Nations and non-governmental organisation staff, and to disclose the whereabouts of people held incommunicado for prolonged periods.
His office said it had verified 32 civilian deaths in Taiz governorate between August 1 and October 19, including 14 children and nine women. It recorded 115 people injured in the same period.
Amnesty International has called on the Houthis to reopen the roads into and around the city.
Yemen Herald found no public Houthi response to the WHO warning or to the Taiz health office statement.
The humanitarian office said in a report released on October 21 that almost 260,000 people had been displaced in the fighting since August. About half of them took refuge in Taiz.
Aid agencies have reached more than 174,000 displaced people since August with food, hygiene kits and emergency cash, the report said. That is nearly six in 10 displaced households.
Yemen’s humanitarian response plan for 2026 estimates that more than 22 million people across the country need assistance. It puts the number who are acutely food insecure at 18.3 million.
Shelter is the need most often reported by newly displaced families, followed by food and cash.
About the Author
