Friday, March 29, 2024 | Ramadan 18, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Yemenis head to Jordan for healthcare

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Shahd looks very uncomfortable, sitting on a chair next to her hospital bed in the Jordanian capital of Amman with an oxygen mask over her face. The 13-year-old Yemeni underwent a heart operation a few days ago and the doctors want her to spend some time sitting, instead of lying down.


A nurse, a doctor and her parents try to help. They put a pillow behind her so she can sit more straight, but her face does not show any sign of relief.


Shahd was among around 30 patients airlifted from Sanaa this month by the World Health Organization (WHO), the first flights carrying those in need of critical medical help since the Yemeni capital’s airport was closed more than three years ago by the a coalition. March marks the fifth anniversary of the formation of the coalition by Saudi Arabia and its allies, the force behind air campaigns fighting the Ansar Allah fighters, who seized control of Sanaa and areas around it in late 2014.


In November, the coalition said it will allow flights carrying civilians needing medical care abroad to leave Sanaa. Shahd has heterotaxy syndrome, a birth defect that affects the heart and other organs, even leaving Shahd’s spleen too large.


“It was a very complicated operation,” her doctor, Ashraf al Shami, said of the nine-hour surgery.


She is expected to feel better in six to 12 months as her organs re-adjust.


These nine hours “were the hardest time in my life. Ask the doctor show much I was crying,” her father, Khaled al Harthi, said.


“In Yemen, we went to several hospitals over the years, but they always said ‘there is no treatment for her here, we cannot do the operation’,” he added.


Two years ago, they applied to authorities in Sanaa, requesting medical treatment abroad. They got excited last year when they were finally moved to a hotel, awaiting travel. But it took another four months until they got on the plane.


The conflict in Yemen has left thousands dead or injured. It led to displacement, food insecurity, damage to the education and health infrastructure, as well as outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria.


Last year, the UN said around 19.7 million people — or 75 per cent of the population — lack access to adequate healthcare and that only 51 per cent of health facilities are fully functional.


On another floor at the hospital in Amman, Abbas al Maharag is waiting for the doctors to decide on his treatment. The question is whether it will be chemotherapy again for his lymphoma or a stem cell transplant.


He was diagnosed in 2011 and travelled for treatment a few times before the war intensified in 2015.


“Since then, I have been waiting and only receiving temporary medications in Yemen,” Al Maharag said.


While Al Maharag expects to remain in hospital for some time, 5-year-old Manal should be discharged soon. Yet, her family expects to remain in Amman for several months for follow-up care.


When she was 1 year old, Manal’s shoulder was dislocated while playing with her older brother, damaging her muscles severely. The four-year-journey took them from one hospital to another, between the city of Amran, where they live, and the capital, Sanaa.


Since 2017, the family have been waiting for treatment abroad and was told to come to Sanaa six or seven times so they could travel. But the trip was always postponed.


“We became desperate. We kept asking them to send us anywhere, India or Turkey or any other coalition member country,” her father, Abdullah Lutfallah, said.


In Amman, she already had a muscle transplant operation. She will remain in a cast for two months before starting physical therapy.


For years, she could not move her shoulder and could not sleep from the pain, Lutfallah said, and the medical facilities in Amran were awful. “In Amran, there is no physiotherapy, no magnetic resonance machines, no proper treatment at all,” added the 35-year-old farmer. — dpa


Nehal El Sherif


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