Five-year-old cancer patient Amina Nasser at the Al-Sadaqa hospital in Yemen's southern city of Aden - Copyright AFP Charly TRIBALLEAU
Shatha Yaish
By AFP
Published March 17, 2022
Five-year-old Amina Nasser hugs her toys in a decrepit cancer ward in Yemen, her life in the hands of a healthcare system pushed to the brink of collapse by grinding conflict.
Rudimentary equipment, peeling paint and the stench of urine are constant reminders of how Yemen’s seven-year-old war has ravaged essential public services.
Amina, two months into her treatment for leukaemia at the Al-Sadaqa hospital in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, is one of millions whose lives have been upended.
“We didn’t have any other choice,” her mother Anissa Nasser said, sitting with her daughter in the rundown paediatric oncology ward.
Amina gets free chemotherapy, but her unemployed parents must find the cash to somehow pay for other medicines and tests.
“We wanted to send her for treatment abroad,” the mother said, but that was far beyond their reach.
The World Bank estimates just half of Yemen’s medical facilities are fully functional, and that 80 percent of the population have problems accessing food, drinking water and health services.
Three-quarters of Yemen’s 30 million population depend on aid.
– Dying of hunger –
It is the legacy of a war that started when Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.
Published March 17, 2022
Five-year-old Amina Nasser hugs her toys in a decrepit cancer ward in Yemen, her life in the hands of a healthcare system pushed to the brink of collapse by grinding conflict.
Rudimentary equipment, peeling paint and the stench of urine are constant reminders of how Yemen’s seven-year-old war has ravaged essential public services.
Amina, two months into her treatment for leukaemia at the Al-Sadaqa hospital in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, is one of millions whose lives have been upended.
“We didn’t have any other choice,” her mother Anissa Nasser said, sitting with her daughter in the rundown paediatric oncology ward.
Amina gets free chemotherapy, but her unemployed parents must find the cash to somehow pay for other medicines and tests.
“We wanted to send her for treatment abroad,” the mother said, but that was far beyond their reach.
The World Bank estimates just half of Yemen’s medical facilities are fully functional, and that 80 percent of the population have problems accessing food, drinking water and health services.
Three-quarters of Yemen’s 30 million population depend on aid.
– Dying of hunger –
It is the legacy of a war that started when Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in 2014.
THE HOUTHI ARE YEMENI SHIA OPPRESSED BY SUNNI MINORITY ALIGNED TO KSA
The internationally recognised government fled south to Aden, and a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in 2015.
Fighting continues. The UN has estimated the conflict has killed 377,000 people, both directly and through hunger and disease.
Some parts of Al-Sadaqa hospital have funding; the malnutrition centre, backed by United Nations agencies, has polished floors and smells of detergent.
Tiny, emaciated children, shrunken by their hunger, lie hooked up to drips.
The UN, which has called Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, warned this week that the number of people in famine conditions is projected to increase five-fold this year to 161,000.
Some 2.2 million children are expected to be acutely malnourished in the coming months, with over half a million children already facing life-threatening starvation.
And the UN has itself warned of a dire funding shortfall ahead; on Wednesday, a pledging conference raised less than a third of the money it said was needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
In the hospital, donor funding means that at least in the ward for malnourished children, there is electricity and the staff have been paid.
But with medics stretched thin, funding for one area means other areas can be neglected.
If there is support for one section of the hospital, then “everyone wants to work there, hoping to improve their living situation,” said Kafaya Al-Jazei, the hospital’s director-general.
– ‘Deplorable’ –
In Aden, public hospitals lack basic equipment as well as staff — with doctors and nurses preferring the higher salaries at private clinics or international organisations.
In another Aden hospital, Al-Joumhouria, a battered bronze plaque in Arabic and English marks the year 1954, during British colonial rule, when Queen Elizabeth II laid the founding stone.
Today, the building is in a pitiful state, with shortages of staff, drugs and equipment.
“The hospital isn’t maintained or air-conditioned,” said nurse Zubeida Said. “There are leaks in the bathrooms. The building is old and dilapidated.”
Hospital staff have protested the “deplorable” conditions, said the hospital’s interim chief, Salem Al-Shabhi, who hires medical students to meet the staff shortfall, for 10,000 riyals (about $9) a day.
Final-year medical students are under no illusions about what awaits them, with some hoping to leave Yemen when they graduate.
“We want a job with a good salary in a safe place,” said Eyad Khaled.
But classmate Heba Ebadi, who plans to specialise in gynaecology, is determined to help her country “even if the health system gets worse”.
“We want to help the people here,” she said. “Who else will help them? We have to stay here.”
War and neglect endanger Yemen’s historical sites
The Sira Fortress in the Yemeni city of Aden has been damaged and defaced by garbage and graffiti scrawled on the centuries-old walls -
The internationally recognised government fled south to Aden, and a Saudi-led military coalition intervened in 2015.
Fighting continues. The UN has estimated the conflict has killed 377,000 people, both directly and through hunger and disease.
Some parts of Al-Sadaqa hospital have funding; the malnutrition centre, backed by United Nations agencies, has polished floors and smells of detergent.
Tiny, emaciated children, shrunken by their hunger, lie hooked up to drips.
The UN, which has called Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, warned this week that the number of people in famine conditions is projected to increase five-fold this year to 161,000.
Some 2.2 million children are expected to be acutely malnourished in the coming months, with over half a million children already facing life-threatening starvation.
And the UN has itself warned of a dire funding shortfall ahead; on Wednesday, a pledging conference raised less than a third of the money it said was needed to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
In the hospital, donor funding means that at least in the ward for malnourished children, there is electricity and the staff have been paid.
But with medics stretched thin, funding for one area means other areas can be neglected.
If there is support for one section of the hospital, then “everyone wants to work there, hoping to improve their living situation,” said Kafaya Al-Jazei, the hospital’s director-general.
– ‘Deplorable’ –
In Aden, public hospitals lack basic equipment as well as staff — with doctors and nurses preferring the higher salaries at private clinics or international organisations.
In another Aden hospital, Al-Joumhouria, a battered bronze plaque in Arabic and English marks the year 1954, during British colonial rule, when Queen Elizabeth II laid the founding stone.
Today, the building is in a pitiful state, with shortages of staff, drugs and equipment.
“The hospital isn’t maintained or air-conditioned,” said nurse Zubeida Said. “There are leaks in the bathrooms. The building is old and dilapidated.”
Hospital staff have protested the “deplorable” conditions, said the hospital’s interim chief, Salem Al-Shabhi, who hires medical students to meet the staff shortfall, for 10,000 riyals (about $9) a day.
Final-year medical students are under no illusions about what awaits them, with some hoping to leave Yemen when they graduate.
“We want a job with a good salary in a safe place,” said Eyad Khaled.
But classmate Heba Ebadi, who plans to specialise in gynaecology, is determined to help her country “even if the health system gets worse”.
“We want to help the people here,” she said. “Who else will help them? We have to stay here.”
War and neglect endanger Yemen’s historical sites
The Sira Fortress in the Yemeni city of Aden has been damaged and defaced by garbage and graffiti scrawled on the centuries-old walls -
Copyright AFP Photo Saleh Al-OBEIDI
Shatha Yaish
Yemen’s Sira Fortress withstood attacks by the Portuguese and the Turks, but years of war have left the 11th century citadel in disrepair, defaced by graffiti and littered with rubbish.
Overlooking the southern port of Aden, Sira sits atop a rocky mountain island in the historic district of Crater, a strategic position that once made it a base for British colonial forces.
Around its ancient walls, cigarette butts litter the ground and a visitor has scrawled the words “I love you” on one of the towers of the redoubtable fortress.
Yemen’s brutal war has not just killed hundreds of thousands, but also laid waste to much of its rich architectural heritage, from its iconic mud brick towers to mosques, churches, museums and military bastions.
Many important archaeological sites and tourist landmarks have been damaged and artefacts looted and smuggled abroad.
“Neglect and ignorance have created a level of loss that can no longer be reversed,” said Asmahan al-Alas, secretary general of the Yemeni Society for History and Archaeology.
“The absence of an official vision for Yemen to maintain and preserve its cultural heritage and identity… has led to a sharp deterioration,” she told AFP.
The cisterns of Aden, millennia-old rainwater tanks carved into the rock to replenish the city wells, have also suffered from neglect.
– ‘Depressed and desperate’ –
Yemen has since 2014 been embroiled in conflict between the government, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Huthis, who control large swathes of the north including the capital Sanaa.
Amid what the United Nations labels the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, authorities have struggled to secure funds to maintain important sites, many of which have been bombed or vandalised.
The Huthi rebels controlled parts of Aden for several months in 2015 before they were pushed out by pro-government forces.
At the time, the Military Museum — established in 1918 as a school and turned into a museum in 1971 — was destroyed in bombing and ultimately looted.
The Saudi-led coalition has acknowledged targeting part of the building in 2015 as a “legitimate military target”.
Osman Abdulrahman, deputy director of Aden’s Antiquities Office, said the city’s key sites still suffer “systematic neglect”, in part for a lack of funding.
“Even if we do get a little bit of funding, it’s not enough to cover even a small part of what is needed,” he told AFP.
With a tiny budget of only about $200 a month, his office can barely afford stationery, he added.
“I feel depressed and desperate,” said Abdulrahman. “Sometimes I wish I had never studied archaeology.”
Yemen’s Sira Fortress withstood attacks by the Portuguese and the Turks, but years of war have left the 11th century citadel in disrepair, defaced by graffiti and littered with rubbish.
Overlooking the southern port of Aden, Sira sits atop a rocky mountain island in the historic district of Crater, a strategic position that once made it a base for British colonial forces.
Around its ancient walls, cigarette butts litter the ground and a visitor has scrawled the words “I love you” on one of the towers of the redoubtable fortress.
Yemen’s brutal war has not just killed hundreds of thousands, but also laid waste to much of its rich architectural heritage, from its iconic mud brick towers to mosques, churches, museums and military bastions.
Many important archaeological sites and tourist landmarks have been damaged and artefacts looted and smuggled abroad.
“Neglect and ignorance have created a level of loss that can no longer be reversed,” said Asmahan al-Alas, secretary general of the Yemeni Society for History and Archaeology.
“The absence of an official vision for Yemen to maintain and preserve its cultural heritage and identity… has led to a sharp deterioration,” she told AFP.
The cisterns of Aden, millennia-old rainwater tanks carved into the rock to replenish the city wells, have also suffered from neglect.
– ‘Depressed and desperate’ –
Yemen has since 2014 been embroiled in conflict between the government, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Huthis, who control large swathes of the north including the capital Sanaa.
Amid what the United Nations labels the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, authorities have struggled to secure funds to maintain important sites, many of which have been bombed or vandalised.
The Huthi rebels controlled parts of Aden for several months in 2015 before they were pushed out by pro-government forces.
At the time, the Military Museum — established in 1918 as a school and turned into a museum in 1971 — was destroyed in bombing and ultimately looted.
The Saudi-led coalition has acknowledged targeting part of the building in 2015 as a “legitimate military target”.
Osman Abdulrahman, deputy director of Aden’s Antiquities Office, said the city’s key sites still suffer “systematic neglect”, in part for a lack of funding.
“Even if we do get a little bit of funding, it’s not enough to cover even a small part of what is needed,” he told AFP.
With a tiny budget of only about $200 a month, his office can barely afford stationery, he added.
“I feel depressed and desperate,” said Abdulrahman. “Sometimes I wish I had never studied archaeology.”
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