Yemen’s camel ambulances

A hospital in Yemen’s mountainous Bani Saad district is the sole facility serving a population of around 20,000 people – and getting there can be a rocky race against time for pregnant women.

With few roads among the mountain villages, the only way for many people to reach the hospital is by camel or on foot. By camel, it can take up to seven hours. On foot, even longer.

Pregnant women make the deeply uncomfortable journey in order to gain access to skilled birth attendants, free of charge, at the maternity ward. Approximately 20 women give birth at the hospital each month.

Nine years of civil war have obliterated Yemen’s health-care system. Fewer than half of the country’s hospitals remain functional, and only 1 in 5 of those are able to provide maternal and newborn services.

The only alternative to the treacherous journey is a home birth, but with a woman dying in childbirth every two hours in Yemen, this option is also fraught with anxiety. If there are complications, there is no one qualified to come quickly and nowhere to easily go for help.

Giving birth has never been such a risky business.

"With every step the camel took forward...I was torn apart" - Mona

Mona, who rode a camel while experiencing contractions at age 19, told the BBC, “There were times I prayed that God would take me away and protect my baby so I could escape the pain.”

Nineteen of Yemen’s 22 governorates face a severe shortage of maternity beds.

A father sees his new baby for the first time.

Yemen is already a forgotten crisis, and the suffering of millions of women and girls only continues to increase. They urgently need support.

More than 18.2 million people in Yemen depend on aid, yet UNFPA’s appeal for funding to sustain programmes for women and girls in 2023 was only 57 per cent funded by the end of the year.

75 per cent of the population depends on aid, but there’s a huge funding gap – which is costing women and girls their lives.

This untenable gap in funding has severe consequences for women and girls. For one, there are now even fewer essential health-care workers, such as midwives and female gynecologists, including at the Bani Saad hospital.

With a fully funded appeal, UNFPA would be able to support more health facilities, improve the health outcomes for women and girls, and reduce preventable deaths.