TAIZ — In a hospital in Yemen's Taiz, a 25-year-old pregnant mother of two lay immobilised after a bullet lodged in her spine while she was trapped inside her home without food or water for two days, Reuters reported on Thursday. Medics at Al-Thawra hospital said they could not perform a scan because she was over four months pregnant. “The bullet entered from the side and is now lodged near the spine. They (the doctors) couldn't remove it because of the fetus,” Amal al-Sabri told Reuters. “Now I am giving up the fetus.” She was injured by a sniper bullet in the village of al-Shaqb, on the slopes of Mount Sabir overlooking Taiz.

Source: Reuters via WNCY

Her case is one of a flood now overwhelming Yemen's front-line hospitals. The UN and aid agencies say health needs in the besieged city of Taiz are critical, amid acute shortages of medicine, oxygen, surgical gloves, anaesthetic and fuel, and hospitals near the front lines are treating up to 700 war wounded in a single week, according to the Red Cross. Taiz, Marib and the Red Sea coast are seeing some of the highest casualties, with patients arriving with gunshot wounds and complex blast injuries.

“The healthcare system across Yemen is at a breaking point,” said Red Cross spokesperson Hachem Osseiran. Even before the latest fighting, more than 40 per cent of hospitals and healthcare facilities across the country were already either closed or partially functioning after years of protracted conflict, he said, and there are growing concerns about disease outbreaks as water runs short and rubbish accumulates on the streets.

Facilities under attack

Health services are not only stretched, they are also under attack. A hospital in Taiz's Sabir Al-Mawadim district was hit by mortar fragments for the second time this month, while a strike on an ambulance killed its driver and a paramedic, according to the UN. On Monday, another strike hit near Mocha General Hospital — where the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières supports the maternity and pediatric wards — damaging the building and triggering panic among patients. “Such incidents are preventing patients from coming to the hospital for fear of their lives,” MSF said.

Taiz governorate, which hosts about half of the 281,000 people newly displaced in Yemen since the start of August, has been largely isolated since October 3, with fighting preventing humanitarian supplies from entering and civilians from leaving. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that “time is running out” to deliver aid to the 800,000 people trapped inside Taiz: damage to a key road linking Taiz to southern governorates has forced aid onto narrow mountain routes, and OCHA called on all parties to respect international humanitarian law and allow safe, sustained and unimpeded access.

Source: UN OCHA update via Grenada Chronicle / UNifeed

Primary care for pregnant women is disrupted across Yemen, community midwives in Taiz city have stopped working because of movement restrictions, and in some front-line hospitals maternity wards are being converted into emergency rooms, Osseiran said. “Some of them (doctors) have to make a very difficult and painful choice: Do I help this woman deliver her baby, or do I rush to a person who is bleeding out because of a gunshot wound?” he said.

In a separate update on Thursday, the World Health Organization put the toll of the renewed escalation at 1,677 people killed and 7,395 injured, with 276,301 people displaced, the Times of Bangladesh reported, citing AP — figures that differ slightly from OCHA's displacement count because the agencies count differently. Marib was the most lethal front, followed by Taiz and Lahij, the WHO said.

Source: Times of Bangladesh, reporting WHO figures via AP