A man, holding his little daughter in his arms, is seen at a remote village in Midi District, Hajjah Province, north Yemen on Aug. 14, 2021. In the besieged districts of Hajjah province in northern Yemen, about 11,350 children have not been vaccinated for more than three years against preventable diseases, according to local health authorities. (Photo by Mohammed Al-Wafi/Xinhua)
by Mohammed al-Azaki, Mohammed al-Wafi
HAJJAH, Yemen, Aug. 16 (Xinhua) -- In the besieged districts of Hajjah province in northern Yemen, about 11,350 children have not been vaccinated for more than three years against preventable diseases, according to local health authorities.
Three-year-old Amani is one of them.
"My daughter is at risk of infection. She has not received polio vaccine or any other type of vaccine since she was born and I'm worried about her health," father Abdullah Fayed told Xinhua in the northern Hayran district.
"No jobs, no food, no medicine and fears hang over us," he added.
Fayed's family was one of those families forced by the war to flee to displacement camps near the Saudi border. When the family returned this year to their village in Hayran, they found their home had already destroyed in the war.
Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Iran-backed Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.
The war has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 4 million and pushed the Yemeni people to the brink of famine.
Another Yemeni, Ali Abdo, complained that his daughter Siham has not received any vaccinations since she was born three years ago.
Dr. Tariq Miswak Hibah, director of the health office in Hayran district, told Xinhua that "around 2,450 children younger than one year old and 8,900 children under the age of 5 in the government-held northern districts have not received any type of vaccine, including the polio vaccine, for over three years."
"Many pregnant mothers are also at risk for not receiving health care due to the lack of medicine and vaccination teams," he said.
"I appeal to the international humanitarian organizations working in Yemen to coordinate with the Ministry of Health for urgent delivery of these vaccines to these embattled districts," Hibah stressed.
In addition to Hayran, the government also controls the neighboring Red Sea districts of Midi, Haradh and Abs, which all are located in the northern part of Hajjah province.
According to the health office in Hayran, an average of 300 patients visit health centers on a daily basis in these areas, mostly children and women.
"Polio vaccination is among the most needed for children in these areas, as well as the vaccinations against diphtheria, measles, hepatitis B, whooping cough, and rubella," Dr. Mohammed Al-Fahidi in Hayran health office told Xinhua.
He said that the lack of those vaccinations could lead to serious illness or permanent disability.
Dr. Mohammed Al-Sharabi, in the same health office, said that the main reasons for the spread of diseases in these areas are water pollution and malnutrition.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the polio virus invades the nervous system of children under the age of five and is capable of causing complete paralysis within hours. The virus spreads between children through contaminated water and food and one case out of 200 infections leads to permanent paralysis in the legs.
The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimated in its June report that a child dies every 10 minutes in Yemen from vaccine-preventable diseases. According to the report, UNICEF and WHO in May vaccinated a total of 3,791,511 children under the age of five in 14 provinces in three days, covering 89 percent of the total vaccination campaign target. Enditem
