The dialysis centre at the Republican Hospital in the government-held city of Taiz, in southwest Yemen, has been forced to cut treatment sessions from four hours to two and a half because of shortages of diesel and specialised medical solutions under the renewed Houthi siege of the city, its director told Al Jazeera in a report published on Saturday, October 24. "Because of the siege and the shortage of diesel and medical solutions, we have recently been forced to reduce dialysis sessions from four hours to just two and a half," Dr Essam Mahyoub Dahan said. "We know this is not adequate, but we have no choice if we are to keep the centre operating for as long as possible before it shuts down completely." Dahan warned that a complete shutdown could happen within days, and said the centre's remaining stocks of dialysis solutions were close to running out.

Source: Al Jazeera, Oct 24, 2026

The centre regularly treats 270 patients with kidney failure, Al Jazeera reported. The supplies it depends on are normally provided by Yemen's Ministry of Health every three months, but the latest delivery, due earlier this month, failed to arrive because of the siege, which began in the first week of October after Houthi advances in the Taiz countryside and has blocked the main road linking Taiz to the southern port city of Aden. In an October 12 statement, the Taiz governorate health office warned that the siege could endanger the lives of 1,110 kidney-failure patients across the governorate, who depend on hospital dialysis services providing about 210 sessions a day; the office also warned that fuel restrictions could shut down medical oxygen production plants, on which operating theatres, intensive care units and incubators depend.

Source: Al Jazeera, Oct 24, 2026

Taiz's hospitals run largely on diesel generators because much of the city's electricity infrastructure was destroyed in the war and never restored. Dr Shaheed al-Ameri, the Republican Hospital's deputy director-general for technical affairs, told Al Jazeera the hospital's reserve diesel ran out early in the siege and it now buys fuel on the black market almost every day at prices up to five times pre-siege levels. Some hospital departments, including essential units, have already suspended operations, he said; laboratory reagents are down to 10 to 15 percent of previous levels, about half of normally available medicines are out of stock, and prices for the rest have doubled. "If this situation continues much longer, we fear we will reach a complete and comprehensive collapse of healthcare services," al-Ameri said. One dialysis patient, Abdul Badi Abdulwuhab, 53, told Al Jazeera the shortened sessions left him weak and in pain: "Two and a half hours is not enough to remove all the fluids and toxins from my body."

Source: Al Jazeera, Oct 24, 2026

The World Health Organization warned on October 22 that critical shortages of fuel, oxygen, medicines and medical supplies were threatening lifesaving healthcare throughout Taiz governorate, with some hospital services already disrupted. According to the WHO, 42 health facilities in Taiz city had reported severe shortages of essential supplies, and hospitals and ambulances in the governorate require at least 156,000 litres of fuel a month to keep functioning; it warned diesel shortages also threaten oxygen production, water pumping, vaccine refrigeration and sanitation. The UN humanitarian office OCHA said on Friday that Taiz had been cut off for 20 days, with more than 800,000 people cut off from aid, water production in the city down by about half and the price of trucked water tripled. Amnesty International on Thursday called on the Houthis to immediately reopen vital roads into and around Taiz. No Houthi response to the hospital's warning was reported in the accounts cited here.

Source: UN OCHA / UN News, Oct 23, 2026