Ansarollah | Report
When the world seals its ears to the groans of the victims while wide open to the justifications of the executioner, death in Yemen becomes a daily routine that nobody questions. Twelve years of Saudi-led aggression and a comprehensive blockade—backed by the United States—surpass the capacity of tears, words, or statistics to fully capture. Every Yemeni home has turned into a house of mourning, every street a cemetery, and every hospital a living witness to the crime of the century committed by Saudi Arabia with American backing, while the international community looks on as if nothing is happening.
In Yemen, one does not need to bear arms to be killed. It is enough to fall ill, to starve, or simply to be a child, a woman, or an elder living in a land turned into a vast prison by the Saudi coalition. Residents are trapped, deprived of medicine, food, and fuel, and forced daily into a grim choice: die under bombardment or perish at the gates of shuttered hospitals.
Yet, when the Yemeni people decided to break this oppressive siege, reclaim their right to life, and respond in kind to establish the equation of "the siege in kind," a torrent of condemnation, denunciation, and protest erupted from every corner. They branded the Yemenis' actions as a crime—as if twelve years of agony, hunger, blockade, and poverty were invisible, silent, and undeserving of even a passing glance. They expected the Yemeni to die in silence, to draw their final breath without a murmur, and to accept an inevitable fate at the mercy of a ruthless tormentor.
To shed light on the background of Yemen's decision to confront this aggression, we examine today just one dimension of the blockade's catastrophic legacy: the healthcare sector. A single sector is enough to reveal the magnitude of the humanitarian crisis inflicted by Saudi Arabia and its allies, let alone the total devastation across all other sectors.
The Healthcare Sector: A Direct Casualty of Siege and War
Yemen's healthcare system was never spared by the Saudi war machine; it stood squarely in the line of fire. Direct and indirect airstrikes, medical embargoes, the closure of ports and airports, the starvation of patients, and a systematic denial of the right to treatment have left the medical sector in ruins, abandoning millions to their fate.
The direct toll includes the destruction of thousands of health facilities. Nearly 2,000 health centers and units have ceased operations due to the blockade and war. Dozens of hospitals have been knocked out of service—some leveled to the ground by Saudi warplanes, while others closed because operating funds, fuel, medicine, and electricity vanished entirely.
Travel Restrictions for Treatment: A Death Sentence for Thousands
One of the most harrowing chapters of this tragedy is the Saudi-imposed ban preventing Yemeni patients from traveling abroad for medical care. They neither kept hospitals functioning and allowed medicines in, nor permitted the sick to leave. At least 18,000 cases of critical illnesses require urgent travel because domestic medical infrastructure has collapsed. Kidney transplants, liver procedures, cancer treatments, and radiation therapies are all services denied to Yemenis by deliberate Saudi decree.
The situation reaches such extremes that a Yemeni cancer patient must travel abroad simply to obtain two radioactive iodine pills. How can they travel when the airport remains shut? And how can they cross land borders when the coalition's mercenaries lie in wait to violate their dignity, plunder their remaining funds, and throw them into prison as if they were criminals rather than patients seeking a chance at survival?
The Medical Embargo: Slow Death by Quota
The pharmaceutical crisis is equally grim. Due to land and sea blockades and the closure of Sana'a International Airport, medical shipments are forced into a lengthy detour through Djibouti—a journey taking three to four months. By the time shipments arrive, medications have expired or spoiled from failing to maintain required cold-chain temperatures in containers sitting under the sun for weeks.
For medications requiring urgent air transport, the tragedy is magnified. Sana'a Airport remains closed by Saudi decree, and UN planes permitted to land carry no more than 300 kilograms per flight, while Yemen requires hundreds of tons of dialysis supplies alone. These flights fail to scratch the surface of actual needs.
The human toll of this medical embargo is staggering: 28,000 cancer-related deaths occurred during the years of aggression because patients could neither travel abroad nor find treatment at home. Cancer patients die one after another, their eyes reflecting a single question: For what crime are we being killed?
The crisis extends to dialysis centers on the verge of complete shutdown—not merely due to a lack of equipment, but because consumables are delayed for months in Djibouti by Saudi orders, or in Aden, where heavy demurrage fines are imposed. Kidney patients who require dialysis every two or three days now face imminent death from shortages of filters and solutions.
Targeting Medical Personnel and Brain Drain
Saudi Arabia's campaign did not stop at killing patients; it reached the physicians themselves. More than 7,000 specialized Yemeni medical professionals have emigrated after being stripped of their ability to work, harassed, and indirectly targeted as part of a systematic policy to drain the nation of its expertise. Concurrently, over 95% of foreign medical staff working in Yemen have fled, leaving a collapsing health system behind.
Those who remain operate under grueling conditions. Hospitals struggle with severe fuel shortages for generators after international supporting organizations abruptly withdrew under Saudi pressure. A massive share of hospital budgets is diverted from buying medicine or paying salaries simply to purchase fuel for intensive care units and operating theaters.
Furthermore, international pharmaceutical companies have withdrawn from Yemen, and local importers have halted operations as blockades, exorbitant fines, and port delays rendered medical trade unviable. The outcome is an acute shortage of life-saving essentials: cardiac stents, surgical pins, ventilators, intravenous fluids, and anesthetics. Heart patients die without stents to open their arteries; the wounded lose limbs because surgical pins for fixing fractures are unavailable. The Yemeni patient is left with nothing but the waiting room of death.
The Numbers Unmask the Magnitude of the Disaster
Official documented statistics paint a far grimmer picture than imaginable. From the onset of the Saudi-American aggression until March 26, 2026, casualties reaching hospitals totaled 60,000, comprising 24,000 martyrs and 36,000 wounded.
Children bore the brunt of the targeting: 3,243 children were martyred and 5,019 injured. Women fared no better, with 3,250 women martyred and 3,436 wounded. The conflict spiked disability rates across the country by 300%, leaving thousands with shattered bodies and broken spirits.
Even during nominal periods of "de-escalation," the Saudi military machine did not relent. Since April 1, 2022, civilian casualties reached 1,097 martyrs and 6,532 wounded, including 920 children and 428 women. The declared truce proved to be merely a continuation of war by other means.
In border regions, Yemeni deaths since the war's inception surpassed 972 martyrs and 3,600 wounded. Even African refugees seeking safe passage to Saudi Arabia were not spared: 103 were killed and 1,671 injured. Since the start of the April 2022 truce alone, 297 martyrs and 2,000 wounded fell in border zones, including 54 dead and 1,251 wounded among African refugees.
Systematic Destruction of Health Infrastructure
Health facilities were direct targets, as if Riyadh sought to eradicate any hope of recovery. 670 health facilities and ambulances were damaged, with 165 completely destroyed and 376 partially ruined. 129 ambulances were struck directly while performing humanitarian missions, despite clear international insignia displayed on their roofs and sides.
Consequently, more than 55% of health facilities in Yemen have completely exited service, while the remaining 45% operate at bare minimum capacity without adequate resources, equipment, or staff.
Twenty-one hospitals were completely destroyed, and 51 partially damaged across 14 governorates. Sa'ada and Hajjah bore the heaviest tolls. In Sa'ada, 8 hospitals were totally destroyed and 2 partially; in Hajjah, 4 were totally destroyed and 5 partially, followed by the capital Sana'a, where 12 hospitals sustained partial damage, alongside Sa'ada, Hodeidah, Amran, and Taiz.
The destruction extended to medicine and oxygen production plants, with one pharmaceutical factory and two oxygen plants directly targeted—a clear message that Saudi Arabia intends to sever every lifeline for Yemenis. Initial estimates place the cost of direct damage to health infrastructure alone at $7 billion.
1.4 Million Deaths Due to the Blockade
The aggregate figures of the tragedy are almost beyond belief. The aggression and blockade have caused 1,400,000 Yemeni deaths—not from direct bombardment, but as a direct result of the blockade, spreading diseases, and malnutrition. It is a slow, silent death that carries no sound of missiles, yet reaps more lives. More than 20 million Yemenis are deprived of basic healthcare, and 17 million suffer from severe hunger. In the eye of this storm, children and women pay the steepest price.
Children and Women: The Most Vulnerable Face of the Tragedy
The war and blockade deprived women and children of their fundamental right to health services. 3.6 million children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, including 630,000 facing severe acute malnutrition that directly threatens their lives. 400,000 children face starvation, breathing their last not from incurable disease, but because food fails to reach their mouths amid a man-made famine.
Throughout the years of aggression, over 864,000 children under five have died. Every single day, 80 newborns under 28 days old perish because their mothers lacked maternal and natal healthcare. 46,000 women died from blockade-related complications, and 350,000 cases of miscarriages were recorded, largely driven by malnutrition and medical deprivation.
Congenital malformations among newborns witnessed a terrifying surge of roughly 22,000 cases in regions targeted by internationally prohibited weapons. These infants are born with permanent disabilities, carrying living testimony of the crime within their tiny frames.
Three thousand children suffering from cardiac anomalies require travel abroad for delicate surgeries, yet travel doors remain slammed shut. Three hundred children battling leukemia urgently need travel for treatment—30% of whom require bone marrow transplants unavailable in Yemen, while the blockade bars their exit. These children are sentenced to death for the sole "crime" of being born Yemeni.
What Crime Is This? And in What Century Do We Live?
What gives Saudi Arabia the right to bar our patients from traveling abroad for treatment? What law permits the entry of bombing sorties while blocking medicine flights? What code condones destroying hospitals, starving children, and stripping the sick of their most basic human rights?
Yemenis possess an inherent right to medical services, to seek medicine and care anywhere on earth like any other nation on the globe. They have the right to ensure that illness is not a death sentence, that hunger is not wielded as a weapon, and that blockades are not instruments of subjugation.
In a world that hears only the voice of the executioner while deafening itself to the cries of victims, Yemen’s healthcare sector remains a living testament to the depths of this tragedy. The souls of children who starved to death, patients slain by withheld medicines, and women who bled out at closed hospital gates—these souls cry out against every party that looked away and every voice that blamed the victim when it stirred to save itself.
In Yemen, death is no longer an extraordinary event; it has become the baseline normal. Every passing day adds to a slow genocide perpetrated by Saudi Arabia and the United States, watched over by humanity in a shameful, unforgivable silence.
Yet, facing this bleak reality, there are those who criticize Yemen's military intervention to end this tragedy. The Yemeni people—renowned for their nobility and resilience—have paid those voices no heed. Backed by divine support, they are moving across all fronts to reclaim their rights by force, for this world understands only the language of strength. Those who choose to stand with Yemen earn the honor of confronting tyranny and oppression, while the slaves of dinars and dirhams await ignominy in this world and torment in the next. Such is the way of God, and none can reverse His decree.
