MSF: COVID-19 has made Yemen's health system's collapse complete

“Five years of fighting had caused Yemen’s healthcare system to collapse in large parts,” confirmed Claire HaDuong, Medecins Sans Frontieres’s head of mission in Yemen, adding: “Now COVID-19 has made that collapse complete.”

In a recent update published on MSF’s website on Wednesday, HaDuong stated that the collapse happened as: “Many hospitals closing for fear of the coronavirus or for lack of staff and personal protective equipment.”

She added: “Many people will die of this virus, but we fear that many others will also die from what should have been preventable deaths, because healthcare is simply not available.”

MSF asserted that it is doing all it can to keep the organisation’s regular healthcare programmes open and to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. However, it explained that it is difficult to bring staff and supplies into the country as the scale of the needs is too great for any single organisation to respond to.

Meanwhile, according to HaDuong:

    There has been a strange mixture of fear and denial about the virus here. People haven’t wanted to accept the possibility that it could arrive or that it was already circulating.

“Five years of fighting had caused Yemen’s healthcare system to collapse in large parts,” confirmed Claire HaDuong, Medecins Sans Frontieres’s head of mission in Yemen, adding: “Now COVID-19 has made that collapse complete.”

In a recent update published on MSF’s website on Wednesday, HaDuong stated that the collapse happened as: “Many hospitals closing for fear of the coronavirus or for lack of staff and personal protective equipment.”

She added: “Many people will die of this virus, but we fear that many others will also die from what should have been preventable deaths, because healthcare is simply not available.”

MSF asserted that it is doing all it can to keep the organisation’s regular healthcare programmes open and to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak in the country. However, it explained that it is difficult to bring staff and supplies into the country as the scale of the needs is too great for any single organisation to respond to.

Meanwhile, according to HaDuong:

    There has been a strange mixture of fear and denial about the virus here. People haven’t wanted to accept the possibility that it could arrive or that it was already circulating.