Hospitals in Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz are on the verge of shutting down vital services as a renewed Houthi rebel blockade chokes off deliveries of fuel, oxygen and life-saving medications, medical staff and humanitarian agencies reported.
The siege, which began during the first week of October following Houthi advances in the surrounding countryside, has severed the primary highway linking Taiz to the southern port of Aden. That route serves as the main supply artery from the interim capital of Yemen’s internationally recognized government. With roads impassable, international relief organizations and local authorities warn that healthcare facilities in the government-controlled city may collapse within days.
Dialysis cut short as fuel vanishes
At the Republican Hospital in Taiz, doctors running the dialysis facility have cut treatment times for 270 kidney failure patients from four hours to two and a half hours to stretch dwindling stockpiles of specialized solutions and generator fuel. Dr. Essam Mahyoub Dahan, the center’s director, told Al Jazeera that the center could soon shut down entirely because quarterly supply shipments from the health ministry failed to arrive.
Dr. Shaheed al-Ameri, the hospital’s deputy director-general for technical affairs, said reserve diesel stocks ran out shortly after the blockade took effect. The facility has since resorted to buying fuel on the black market at five times the pre-siege cost. He told Al Jazeera that approximately half of the hospital’s standard drug inventory is completely depleted, while laboratory reagent supplies have plummeted to between 10 and 15 percent of normal capacity.
Across the wider Taiz governorate, an estimated 1,110 dialysis patients rely on hospital treatment centers that provide about 210 sessions daily, according to local health officials.
Critical infrastructure under strain
Because fighting destroyed much of the local electrical grid early in Yemen’s 11-year war, hospitals depend entirely on diesel generators. The World Health Organization reported that 42 health facilities across the city are experiencing severe shortages, noting that medical facilities and ambulances need at least 156,000 liters of fuel per month to function.
Taysir al-Samei, an official with the governorate’s health office, warned that generator failures threaten to halt medical oxygen production. That loss would immediately compromise intensive care units, surgical wards and incubators for premature infants. In addition, aid groups noted that unpowered water pumps and grounded sanitation vehicles dramatically raise the danger of cholera and other waterborne epidemics.
A deepening humanitarian emergency
The medical breakdown forms part of a wider crisis affecting more than 1 million residents inside Yemen’s third-largest city. The United Nations reported that more than 800,000 people in Taiz are currently severed from regular humanitarian assistance, including at least 200,000 women and children.
Basic necessities have grown increasingly out of reach. Commercial water truckers who manage to navigate the encirclement have tripled their fees, while the cost of bottled water has risen by up to 75 percent, ABC News reported. Cooking gas prices have quadrupled, forcing impoverished families to prepare meals over open fires of wood and cardboard. The UN has identified more than 52,000 children in Taiz suffering from acute malnutrition.
Amnesty International has urged the Houthis to reopen transit corridors immediately, warning that closing access routes has pushed the city toward catastrophe. The UN has reiterated calls for unhindered aid entry, though frontline shelling and intense mountain clashes around the perimeter continue to block relief convoys from reaching civilians.
