Amid conflict and poverty, Yemen’s hospitals are struggling

In the war-torn country, even the easily preventable and treatable medical issues are proving deadly.

When Um Ayman began to have pain in her stomach, she did not think it was the beginning of labour because she was not yet nine months into her pregnancy. She went to the pharmacy, whose “volunteer doctor” is the only option for medical advice in al-Malahaet, her village. It is an isolated place, near Yemen’s border with Saudi Arabia and the front line where Saudi and Yemeni troops face off with fighters from Ansar Allah (the Houthis). “The doctor told me that it was not time for me to give birth and gave me some IV fluids,” she said. “But then my waters broke.” She spent three agonising days at home trying to give birth before her family managed to scrabble together the money needed for the five-hour car ride to the closest town, Haydan. There, staff at the Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières, MSF) hospital found that her baby had been lying horizontally across her uterus, instead of straight down. The baby had died during labour and Um Ayman needed urgent surgery to remove the corpse and save her life.