The risks and complications faced by women in the area are easily preventable, but without consistent and accessible prenatal and postnatal care, pregnancy becomes more dangerous. The health care centers in the region are ill-equipped, untrained, and scarce to begin with. So women are left with no choice but to travel long distances on bad roads.
“There are so many challenges for mothers in Yemen, and most of them are linked to the war, making access to the few left health centers too complicated,” says Altaf Al Wahidi, a 28-year-old midwife at the MSF maternity. “That’s why the location of this maternity ward is so crucial, we cover a large area of the west coast.”
Quick health care access is lifesaving
The complications that women experience can be dealt with by the hospital and its staff, if patients arrive on time. However, Van Haver insists that a closer-to-home first line care should be available. Given the west coast’s population, about 1,300 women are expected to give birth each month.
“Around 250 are delivering with us now,” says Van Haver. “So there are 1,000 other deliveries every month somewhere else, [often] not in health facilities. And because of that, we see a lot more complications requiring invasive treatments.”
There are many factors working against a woman’s ability to reach a hospital on the west coast: continued displacement due to the conflict, many checkpoints along roads, dire economic conditions, and the need to get formal consent from a male family member for any medical care, including a cesarean section. This leaves expectant mothers with little choice but to deliver in unsafe settings, risking their and their baby’s lives.
