Siege fuels disease fears in Yemen's Taiz as baby dies

Gaza Ali Abdulmughni al-Shaqab, an infant, fell ill and died after her family was unable to get her emergency medical treatment. The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms said the vehicle carrying the baby to hospital was attacked by Houthi forces as it travelled through mountain roads. A woman holding the child’s body in a widely circulated video said: “Our children are dying because of the siege. We have no open road, no medics and no medicines.”

The siege of Taiz and areas such as al-Shaqab intensified in early October when the Houthis advanced and cut off the last major supply route into government-held areas. The Iran-backed group captured substantial territory along Yemen's Red Sea coast in September and made further advances in Taiz governorate. Government counteroffensives have had limited success, and the siege continues.

The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of tightening the siege on nearly two million people for more than a month, preventing food, safe drinking water, medicines and fuel. Human Rights Watch said in a statement on October 29 that the siege “may amount to the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare”. The Houthis have denied responsibility for the road closures, blaming Yemeni government forces, but HRW said residents, aid workers and UN officials reported the Houthis were to blame.

International bodies have warned of the crisis facing Taiz. On October 14, the World Food Programme said it had been unable to reach more than 600,000 people in Taiz who depended on humanitarian assistance, describing the situation as “especially alarming” and noting that most districts in Taiz were classified as facing emergency levels of hunger. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that health services were failing because of supply shortages, and said nearly 250,000 people had lost access to essential healthcare, including more than 186,000 children under five. OCHA also reported more than 1,400 cases of acute diarrhoea and suspected cholera in one week. “Twelve hospitals are at risk of closing or have had to reduce services due to a lack of fuel and critical supplies,” OCHA added.

According to figures obtained by Al Jazeera from Taiz’s Public Health and Population Office, 5,642 cases across three disease categories were recorded in the latest four-week reporting period: 5,228 cases of acute watery diarrhoea, 232 suspected dengue fever cases and 182 suspected cholera cases. Dr Yasin Abdulmalik, director of the epidemiological surveillance department, said the number of watery diarrhoea cases had decreased but that was likely because residents found it harder to reach health facilities due to road closures. “The siege has led to a shortage of petroleum products, including fuel, whose prices have risen on the black market,” Abdulmalik said. “In reality, more than twice this number of cases were unable to reach [health facilities] because of the siege and its various consequences.”

Taysir al-Samiei, a health communications official, said patients’ ability to reach hospitals had fallen by 60 to 70 percent by the end of the second week of the siege. Dr Fares al-Absi, a consultant in diabetes, endocrinology and obesity, linked the high number of diarrhoea and cholera cases to the use of unsafe water sources, saying only about 8 percent of Taiz’s water needs were being met and most local wells were unfit. He also said dengue was spreading because of conditions in the city, noting that mosquitoes that transmit the disease breed in stagnant water and accumulated rubbish can create conditions that favour mosquito breeding. He said tonnes of waste had accumulated in the streets because of insufficient diesel to transport it. “Both stagnant water and rubbish have increased significantly as a result of the siege, as streets and residential neighbourhoods have turned into open rubbish dumps,” he said.