Taiz Maternity Care Nears Collapse as 13,000 Pregnant Women Lose Access
More than 13,000 pregnant women in and around Yemen’s Taiz now lack essential medical care, while the city’s main maternity hospital could close within days. That is the brutal measure of a siege economy: births do not stop when roads close, fuel runs out and war empties hospital wards.
The United Nations Population Fund issued the warning on Tuesday, November 3, after a month of intensified fighting and access restrictions isolated Taiz. UNFPA representative Francesco Galtieri said midwives are reporting more miscarriages and unsafe deliveries. Only five of 27 designated emergency maternal and neonatal facilities remain partly operational.
The crisis reaches far beyond those approaching childbirth. UNFPA says roughly 147,000 women and girls of childbearing age have lost access to essential services. Among 6,400 displaced pregnant women, the agency expects about 1,500 obstetric emergencies as conflict, flight and hunger compound the physical risks of pregnancy.
“No woman should have to risk her life simply because she is giving birth,” Galtieri said.
At the Yemeni-Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital, Taiz’s main maternity facility, daily deliveries have fallen from about 10 to five. Most incubators cannot operate because fuel is scarce. Shelling, insecurity and soaring transport costs keep both patients and medical workers from reaching the building. UNFPA warned that the hospital itself may shut unless access restrictions ease in the coming days.
This is not an abstract shortage. An incubator without electricity becomes a life-or-death deadline. A blocked road turns a manageable hemorrhage into a fatal emergency. A midwife who cannot travel leaves a woman to give birth without skilled support.
The food system is collapsing alongside health care. The World Food Programme says more than 800,000 people in Taiz and nearby districts have lost food assistance since early October. Galtieri said some pregnant women survive on little more than tea, bread or rice. Malnutrition raises the danger of anemia, premature delivery and low birth weight before a mother ever reaches a clinic.
Taiz has absorbed about half of the roughly 300,000 people displaced across Yemen by the latest fighting. The city’s supply routes, including the Taiz–Aden corridor, have been obstructed amid clashes between forces aligned with the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government and the Houthi movement. Reuters reported that Houthi forces blocked key routes; the report did not carry a Houthi response to that allegation.
The immediate emergency sits inside a longer war. Houthi forces took Sanaa in 2014. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 on behalf of the internationally recognized government. A 2022 truce sharply reduced cross-border attacks but did not produce a political settlement. Renewed fighting this year has again pushed civilians, hospitals and aid networks toward collapse.
Responsibility does not end with the forces controlling checkpoints and firing lines. Yemen’s humanitarian system has also been starved of money. UNFPA says it needs $22.7 million for the next three months, including $5.7 million to expand operations in conflict-affected areas. Nearly three-quarters of protection services for women and girls across Taiz Governorate have already been suspended because of funding, access and staffing constraints.
The agency’s demand is immediate and limited: safe, sustained passage for humanitarian workers and supplies, protection for civilians and medical personnel, and enough funding to keep reproductive-health services alive. Those steps will not settle Yemen’s sovereignty dispute or end the regional contest around it. They can stop women and newborns from paying for that struggle with preventable deaths.
Taiz’s maternity crisis shows how war destroys a society long before a hospital formally closes. The warning is already visible in empty beds, dark incubators and women attempting dangerous births beyond the reach of care. The corridor must open before the city’s final maternity lifeline disappears.
Sources: Reuters · UNFPA Yemen · Anadolu Agency · Photos: Julien Harneis / Wikimedia Commons and Amin Dabwan / Wikimedia Commons.
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