Accessing emergency health care is a very difficult job for people in remote areas in Yemen, especially as many public health facilities are not operative due to the ongoing conflict, which has brutally affected the existing health system.

The story of 2-year-old “Janat Mohammed” clearly depicts the current difficult situation. Janat was severely malnourished when her five-member family (father, mother, and three children) were suffering from very difficult economic and living conditions.
As the father was striving to survive and provide for the family against the backdrop of soaring food prices, the health center closest to their area of residence in Al-Misrakh district, Taiz governorate lacked the simplest health services and supplies. Further, the father couldn’t afford traveling costs, not to mention seeking better medical services in different areas.

In such a moment of despair, hope was brought to Janat’s father and the family through a humanitarian project that ensured the delivery of critical services to this family and fortunately thousands of the district’s children, who had received the needed medical support and food. This project consists of two Mobile Medical Units (MMUs) launched under the project “Access to Conflict-affected Communities in Yemen with Effective and Sustainable Support”.

This project, funded by Penny Appeal Australia, was implemented by HUMAN ACCESS within five months (from December 2021 to May 2022, where it benefited 21,267 people in this target district.

The project mainly aimed at providing life-saving support to vulnerable groups- namely children below the age of five, and pregnant and lactating mothers (PLWs)- and providing integrated nutrition services, maternal and child health support to underprivileged and conflict-affected communities.
The services provided under this project included delivery of health education and sensitization materials; providing reproductive health services, and conducting home-to-home visits to educate parents, take MUAC for children and women, identify malnourished cases, and refer them to mobile medical units for treatment. This is besides other services that ensured the provision of life-saving emergency nutrition interventions for the most vulnerable groups, enhanced maternal and child health services aimed at saving the lives of newborns and women of reproductive age, as well as promoted needy women’s equal access to life-saving maternal and child health services and education, in addition to developed and activated an effective referral mechanism to save the lives of women and newborns.

All beneficiaries are now all hopes that this project would be maintained and scaled up to cover more areas in order to prevent diseases and malnutrition, which affect women and children in particular, in a country still facing the worst humanitarian crisis, and half of its health facilities are not operational, according to UN reports.