Yemen’s Critically Ill Patients Trapped as War and Airport Closures Cut Off Lifesaving Care Abroad
For Rajaa Ghirsan, a 50-year-old seamstress from the Houthi-controlled capital of Sanaa, every breath depends on a specialized device fitted around her neck. Suffering from severe laryngeal complications and vocal cord paralysis, she must replace the plastic apparatus every two months at a cost of $100. Having already undergone six operations abroad in Egypt and India since 2006, Ghirsan now requires another complex surgical procedure outside Yemen to reopen her airway. Yet, because the country’s conflict-ravaged medical infrastructure lacks the necessary specialist care, she has spent seven years attempting to secure a seat on a once-weekly flight to Amman, Jordan—an effort repeatedly thwarted by air attacks and airport closures.
Ghirsan’s predicament mirrors that of hundreds of thousands of critically ill patients across Yemen, where a renewed slide into full-scale war has shattered the nation’s transportation networks. Sanaa International Airport, the primary air link for millions in the north, has faced intermittent closures since the Saudi-led coalition restricted commercial traffic in August 2016. Although a United Nations-brokered truce briefly allowed flights to resume in May 2022, subsequent Israeli air attacks in 2025 damaged the facilities and destroyed aircraft. In July, Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia targeted the airport’s sole working runway to prevent an incoming Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation.
With Sanaa grounded, patients have increasingly looked to Aden International Airport, the main hub in territory controlled by the internationally recognized government. However, Aden has also come under fire as hostilities reignite. On October 16, two missiles landed approximately 500 meters from a Yemenia airliner preparing for takeoff to Cairo, marking the second attack on the facility that month. Additional unrest earlier in the year shuttered the airport in Seiyun, located in the eastern province of Hadramout, leaving travelers with virtually no reliable domestic departure points.
The human cost of these disruptions has been devastating. Anis al-Asbahi, spokesperson for the Houthi-run Ministry of Health in Sanaa, reported that a decade of airport closures has impacted roughly 400,000 patients, including 250,000 individuals requiring treatment overseas. Furthermore, flight bans have triggered critical shortages of more than 1,600 types of medicine, blocked 12 specific cancer drugs from entering the country, and left over 40,000 patients suffering from thalassemia and haemolytic anaemia without necessary iron chelation drugs and intravenous solutions.
Families desperate to save their loved ones often face grueling overland journeys across active front lines. Mohammed Shajara attempted to transport his paraplegic five-year-old daughter to Tehran in June, only to become stranded when the government blocked Iranian flights to Sanaa the following month, forcing them to return untreated. For Abdulkarim Abdullah, a 60-year-old kidney failure patient whose family could no longer sustain the cost of weekly dialysis in Sanaa, the journey to Aden proved fatal. To finance the trip, his brother Mohammed sold his wife’s gold and his own car, paying approximately $2,300 to cover a rented car, hotel stays, security clearances, and plane tickets. Despite these sacrifices, Abdulkarim never reached the flight; he died on the road to Aden in January.
Traveling by land presents immense dangers even for those not seeking foreign medical care. Fouad al-Haddad, director of al-Jumhuri Hospital in the southwestern city of Taiz, noted that the closure of main routes around the city forces travelers onto rugged mountain tracks that are too grueling for severely ill patients and fraught with security risks. The region has also absorbed massive displacement, with nearly 147,000 people displaced across Yemen in September alone, more than 80,000 of them fleeing to Taiz.
Administrative hurdles further compound the crisis. Nadia al-Rashidi, head of the Hadramout-based NGO Hayat Jadida, explained that flights from Mukalla’s al-Rayyan airport to Aden operate only once weekly, while neighboring al-Ghaydah airport remains closed. Patients flying to Egypt or Jordan must also secure official clearances, a process taking about half a month normally or costing $200 for expedited processing.
In government-held areas, Aref al-Hawshabi, director general of the National Centre for Health Education and Media at the Aden Health Ministry, stated that 1,170 patients have submitted medical files for the ministry’s free treatment grants abroad, though the actual need is vastly higher because many cannot even complete the paperwork. Conditions frequently necessitating overseas intervention include cancers, blood disorders, organ transplants, cochlear and corneal transplants, and severe congenital malformations. Even those who manage to leave often struggle with extended stays due to depleted funds or encounter entry complications upon arriving in India or Jordan.
In September, government Health Minister Qasim Buhaibeh warned that 19.3 million people across Yemen require health assistance, while international response funding has reached only 17 percent of its required target. With no formal medical evacuation program operating in any part of the country, doctors continue to witness preventable tragedies in hospital wards as patients engage in a losing race against time.
