It has been one year since the humanitarian medical organisation Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) started providing life-saving health services at the General Rural Hospital of Thi As Sufal District in Ibb governorate.
The General Rural Hospital of Thi As Sufal, locally known as Al-Kaida Hospital, is one of the numerous health facilities in Yemen which has been financially crippled by the war that started in March 2015.The hospital is located in an area that is home to nearly 500,000 people in addition to the internally displaced people who fled the active frontline just 20 kilometres away in Taiz Governorate. In this hospital, MSF receives patients from both Ibb and Taiz Governorates, providing an average of 250 emergency consultations per week.
“Since the beginning of the war, medical needs in the country have exploded,” says Satoru Ida, MSF Head of Mission in Yemen. “In response, MSF has increased its assistance to those who have difficulty accessing emergency and basic medical care. Our new project in Thi As Sufal district is part of this expansion. Our aim is to ensure free access to good quality emergency health care, improving the hospital’s mass casualty management and providing lifesaving surgery as well as hospitalisation for the most severe medical conditions. ”
At this hospital, MSF is running a 54-bed inpatient department that includes an intensive care unit for children and adults, as well as providing life-saving surgery such as trauma cases and caesarean sections. In a little more than ten months, MSF has treated 6,081 patients in the emergency room, performed 2,117 surgical interventions and admitted 1,498 patients in the hospital. The cases in the emergency and operating rooms have increased by 1.5 and 5 times, respectively, since the project was opened.
“The hospital was providing very limited services as it lacked specialized medical staff to operate the medical equipment in the hospital,” says Dr. Sameer Al-Ariqi, the Ministry of Health General Manager of the Hospital. “MSF started working in the operating theatre and emergency room providing life-saving health services as well as the necessary medications and medical supplies.”
MSF now ensures the presence of specialized staff such as general and orthopaedic surgeons and anaesthetist doctors at the hospital.
In addition to its work in the General Rural Hospital, MSF is providing life-saving emergency services in the emergency room at Al-Thawra Hospital in the main city of Ibb.
MSF is an international medical organisation working in nearly 70 countries including Yemen. In Yemen, MSF works in Ibb, Taiz, Sa’ada, Hajja, Amran, Aden, Al-Dhale’ and Sana’a governorates. All medical care provided by MSF is free of charge and accessible to all without discrimination. MSF treats patients irrespective of their religious, tribal, political or other affiliations. More than 50,000 war-wounded and violence victims patients have been treated in MSF- run or supported hospitals across Yemen since March 2015.
