Suffering and crises.. Yemeni complaints of deteriorating health sector due to Houthi violations
Houthi’s persistent crimes and violations continue in many sectors, with the health sector collapsing rapidly and more than half of its facilities out of service. Health workers have accused the Houthis of committing new violations against medical facilities and personnel in areas under the group’s control.
Houthi abuses
Human rights activists have warned of the deterioration of the health situation in many areas of Yemen controlled by the terrorist group, which lack basic hygiene and humanitarian standards. Dangerous diseases are spreading amid deliberate neglect by the group as a form of revenge and torture.
According to human rights reports, these Houthi crimes have led to a near-total lack of medical services, outbreaks of disease and epidemics, and a widening spread of corrupt medicines, in full view of coup authorities, who have mobilized no inhabitants.
According to the report, the wave of Houthi violations ranged from crimes of tampering, corruption, raids, closures and confiscation, the imposition of financial duties under different names, and the kidnapping of health workers in Sanaa. As a result, fees for health services have jumped to unprecedented figures in areas under the group’s control.
In the continuation of the ongoing series of Houthi corruption, which has affected and continues to affect medical institutions in Sanaa and other cities, human rights activists accused Taha Al-Mutawakil, the Houthi leader who was appointed Minister of Health in the unrecognized government of coup, of stealing most of the financial and technical support provided by international health organizations to support government facilities, with the aim of providing medical services to Yemeni patients.
Ongoing crimes
Ahmed Jabbari, a Yemeni human rights researcher, said that Houthi’s terrorist crimes ranged from kidnapping Yemeni hospital workers, committing the most heinous crimes against doctors, nurses, and other workers, and destroying medical facilities. This caused panic among health workers and patients inside the hospital, as militia members had previously robbed medical facilities by force of arms.
The Yemeni human rights activist added: “One of these figures is Houthi’s crimes, which have resulted in 932 cases of closure and incursions of health centers, hospitals, private clinics and pharmacies in various Yemeni governorates. The Yemeni people living in areas controlled by Houthi militias are suffering from the deterioration of the health sector and medical services.” In the middle of this year, the Protect Health in Conflict coalition accused militias of harming the health sector and of violence against health care.
Deterioration of medical facilities
“Houthi’s crimes have affected the deterioration of health facilities, hospitals and health workers in various parts of Yemen,” said Abdulhafeez Nahari, a Yemeni political analyst.
He pointed out that Houthi violations ranged from direct killing, injury, arrest and forced disappearance of medical staff, medics and others, to summary executions and sexual assaults, to targeting medical facilities with explosions, booby-traps, looting, closure and confiscation of other facilities, in addition to the seizure by the militias of relief medical aid, trading in medicines on the black market and depriving civilian patients of it.
International Warnings
UNICEF reiterated that the situation in Yemen, which is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, two-thirds of its population are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance as a result of conflicts and epidemics, and that children are the primary victims of this crisis; Some 11 million children need some form of humanitarian assistance or protection,” Agence France Presse reported.
