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Yemen

Yemen: "I just wish that this war would stop"

Photos and Testimonies from Yemen's Hajjah Governorate

In Yemen’s Hajjah Governorate, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) runs a network of mobile medical clinics to serve people driven from their homes by recurrent airstrikes and fighting who have taken sanctuary in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) or in residential areas of Hayran and Mustaba in Abs District.

Every day, medical teams visit camps and towns in the districts to provide primary basic health care and monitor the nutritional situation. In the first six months of 2016, MSF carried out more than 10,000 consultations treating respiratory conditions, chronic diseases, diarrhea, malaria, anemia, and skin diseases. MSF also supplies safe drinking water from some 16,000 displaced people.

MSF also works in the Abs Rural Hospital, the primary functioning hospital in western Hajjah Governorate, managing emergency cases and performing surgeries when needed. The hospital also has pediatric and maternity wards and provides mental health and post-operative care.

Patients and their families tell very similar stories about how they had to flee their homes when fighting and aerial attacks got too close, and how they struggled to raise enough money to pay for the high transportation costs required to get to the hospital. This has been a common refrain from the war in Yemen, as prices for basic goods and services—such as fuel and transportation—have skyrocketed due to pervasive shortages and lethal risks.

Read on to hear and see more about the many ways in which people are struggling to deal with the ongoing war in Yemen.