Siege fuels disease fears in Yemen’s Taiz

Taiz, Yemen – The woman held the body of a young baby girl wrapped in a white shroud.

“Our children are dying because of the siege. We have no open road, no medics and no medicines,” the woman said.

Wearing the traditional clothing of women from Jabal Sabir, the mountain that overlooks the city of Taiz and is one of its most famous symbols, she appeared in a short video widely circulated on social media on November 10.

In her arms was the body of an infant from her family, identified as Gaza Ali Abdulmughni al-Shaqab, who had fallen ill and died after her family was unable to get her emergency medical care. The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms said the vehicle carrying the baby to the hospital was attacked by Houthi forces as it travelled through mountain roads.

“She died, and we couldn’t get her emergency treatment because of the siege,” the woman said, referring to the ongoing Houthi siege of al-Shaqab, which lies on a front line between the rebel group and Yemeni government forces.

The siege of Taiz and the surrounding areas such as al-Shaqab intensified in early October, when the Houthis advanced around the city and cut off the last major supply route into government-held areas.

Fighting between the Iran-backed group and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government intensified over the summer, before the Houthis captured substantial territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast in September and then made further advances in Taiz governorate.

Government counteroffensives have only had limited success so far, and the siege of the city of Taiz continues.

The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of tightening their siege on nearly two million people living in Taiz for more than a month, preventing the entry of food, safe drinking water, medicines and fuel.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on October 29 that the siege imposed by the Houthis on civilians in Taiz “may amount to the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare”.

The Houthis have denied responsibility for the road closures, instead blaming Yemeni government forces.

But HRW said that residents, aid workers and United Nations officials had all reported that the Houthis were to blame.

International bodies have repeatedly warned of the crisis now facing Taiz.

On October 14, the World Food Programme (WFP) said that it had been unable to reach more than 600,000 people in Taiz dependent on humanitarian assistance.

The WFP described the situation as “especially alarming”, noting that most districts in Taiz were classified as facing emergency levels of hunger.

For its part, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that health services in Taiz were failing because of a shortage of supplies.

Nearly 250,000 people had lost access to essential healthcare, including more than 186,000 children younger than five years old, the agency said.

It added that more than 1,400 cases of acute diarrhoea and suspected cholera were reported in just 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 the Epidemiological Surveillance Department at Taiz’s Public Health and Population Office, 5,642 cases across three disease categories were recorded during the latest four-week reporting period.

The vast majority – 5,228 cases – were of acute watery diarrhoea. There were also 232 suspected dengue fever cases and 182 suspected cholera cases.

The number of watery diarrhoea cases decreased compared with the previous reporting period, but Dr Yasin Abdulmalik, the director of the department, said that was likely the result of residents finding it increasingly difficult to reach health facilities because of road closures between the city and surrounding rural areas.

“The siege has led to a shortage of petroleum products, including fuel, whose prices have risen on the black market,” Abdulmalik said. “This has created an additional difficulty in travelling to hospitals and health centres for treatment because of higher transport fares.”

“In reality, more than twice this number of cases were unable to reach [health facilities] because of the siege and its various consequences,” he said.

Taysir al-Samiei, a health communications official at Taiz’s Public Health and Population Office, told Al Jazeera that patients’ ability to reach hospitals had fallen by between 60 and 70 percent by the end of the second week of the siege.

Dr Fares al-Absi, a consultant in diabetes, endocrinology and obesity, said the reported high number of acute watery diarrhoea and cholera cases was down to the use of unsafe water sources.

Al-Absi said the situation had worsened “after the Houthis prevented safe drinking water from entering the city, except for limited quantities sold at high prices, which have risen dramatically because of the shortage of diesel”.

“Recently, access to the al-Dhabab water basin, a major source of water transported by trucks, has been restricted,” al-Absi added. “Only about 8 percent of Taiz’s water needs are currently being met, while most local wells are unfit for consumption.”

Al-Absi also explained that dengue fever was spreading because of the conditions in the city.

The disease is transmitted by mosquitoes that breed in stagnant water, while accumulated rubbish can also create conditions that favour mosquito breeding.

Al-Absi said that tonnes of waste had accumulated in Taiz’s streets because of insufficient diesel to transport the rubbish. He also accused the Houthis of preventing sanitation trucks from reaching the landfill in the west of the city.

“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.