Special Investigations

Press Freedom Defense Fund

Yemenis Unable to Reach Hospital Are Part of the Iran War Death Toll

At least 10 patients with kidney failure near Taiz, a city under a Houthi siege, died because they were unable to get to their dialysis treatments.

SANA’A, Yemen — For more than two weeks, Abdullah laid at home in al-Silw district, in Yemen’s besieged southwestern governorate of Taiz, as his body slowly failed.

The 58-year-old had lived with kidney failure for two years, and his doctor had prescribed dialysis twice a week.

Since the siege, however, the fighting stood between al-Eissi and the dialysis center in Taiz city that kept him alive. Al-Eissi wouldn’t let his family risk their lives to take him to the center.

“My father’s condition deteriorated badly,” said his son, Muadh, 38. “We couldn’t move him to Taiz because the fighting had intensified.”

About a week ago, al-Eissi died at home in his bed.

“When I saw my mother weeping for her husband, I felt helpless,” Muadh said. “It might have been avoided if my father had reached his dialysis sessions on time.”

Abdullah is one of at least 10 dialysis patients who have died since the siege on Taiz began because they could not reach treatment, according to Dr. Issam Mahyoub, director of the kidney dialysis center at al-Jumhuri Hospital in Taiz. Doctors warn that many more could follow.

“About 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center.”

“About 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center.”

“About 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center,” said Dr. Fouad al-Haddad, the hospital’s director. “Behind every number is a human being and a family living in anxiety, waiting for a chance to continue treatment that may never come.”

The kidney-failure deaths are part of the toll of a wider regional war set off by an unprovoked February attack against Iran by Israel and the United States. Estimates hold that 10,000 or more people have died during the war, including both military and civilian deaths across the region. Since the regional war reignited in Yemen this summer, according to the World Health Organization, at least 800 people have been killed, with thousands wounded and tens of thousands displaced.

“The plight of dialysis patients in Taiz illustrates how geopolitical struggles over deterrence, energy security, and regional leverage translate into blocked transit, disrupted medical care, and preventable deaths,” said Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy. “Yemen’s population has already endured more than a decade of devastating war, and the tragedy is that this wider regional conflict is now threatening to plunge it back into another humanitarian catastrophe.”

Yemen in the Iran War

Yemen entered the war in March, when the Iran-aligned Ansarallah armed group, more commonly known as the Houthis, began firing missiles into Israel in retaliation for its attacks on Iran. The Houthis, who gained control of various portions of Yemen during a two-decade-long insurgency, including the capital of Sana’a, saw their prominence in the Iran war grow with attacks against shipping channels........

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