Ongoing fighting and the closure of vital roads in Yemen’s Taiz governorate have worsened patients’ suffering by disrupting access to health facilities and medical supplies in areas affected by the fighting, amid disease outbreaks and a reduced humanitarian response capacity unable to meet growing needs.
Food and medicine shortages deepen patients’ suffering
The governorate’s director of planning and international cooperation said more than 100,000 people were suffering shortages of food and medicine, linking the situation to the spread of disease and the weak humanitarian response. Patients face difficulties travelling along closed or damaged roads to reach healthcare as fighting continues in the governorate.
The suffering comes amid a military escalation on the southern Taiz and western coast fronts during August and September 2026, which has worsened access and medical referral routes. In an update issued on 24 September, the World Health Organisation said access from Aden to the western coast had stopped, while travel towards Al-Turbah and Taiz city had become difficult.
The organisation added that the main paved road between Taiz and Aden had been repeatedly affected by the escalation, increasing pressure on alternative routes used to transport patients and supplies. The organisation’s representative in Yemen, Sayed Jaafar Hussein, said maintaining emergency care required protecting access to health services, preserving the flow of supplies, and strengthening hospital capacity and referral routes.
Casualties and health damage in Taiz
According to the organisation’s data for the period from 6 August to 18 September 2026, the escalation in Yemen caused 3672 casualties, including 674 deaths and 2998 injuries. The recorded toll in Taiz and the western coast was 1349 people, the second-highest after Ma’rib, which recorded 1690 casualties.
Health services were also directly affected. The World Health Organisation said nine health facilities or assets in Taiz, Lahj and Hudaydah had been damaged, taken out of service, closed or directly targeted. It said continuing security restrictions and deteriorating access routes threatened the remaining facilities’ ability to receive cases and provide life-saving care. Field pressures coincided with shortages of some medical supplies.
The organisation reported that its warehouse in Aden had run out of normal saline solutions, sterile surgical gloves, atropine and potassium chloride, while emergency surgery and trauma kits and some anaesthetic medicines were also unavailable, despite three emergency shipments being delivered.
Road closures threaten the health of women and newborns
The effects of road closures and disrupted facilities extended to maternal and newborn health services. The United Nations Population Fund said on 21 September that the escalation on the southern Taiz and western coast fronts had cut access to reproductive healthcare and protection services for more than 30,000 women of reproductive age.
In Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi districts of Taiz governorate, facilities providing emergency obstetric and newborn care closed, deepening the gap in access to specialised care, particularly for pregnant women living near front lines or in areas from which hospitals are difficult to reach. Taiz’s hospitals had faced health pressures before the latest escalation.
The World Health Organisation reported in February 2026 that hospitals in Taiz and Ma’rib were continuously receiving people injured in road accidents, explosions and shootings, and that the survival of critical cases depended on rapid access to trained teams, functioning operating theatres and essential supplies.
Between October and December 2025, more than 700 surgical operations were performed at Al-Thawra Hospital and the Republican Hospital in Taiz and at Ma’rib General Hospital, while 3572 patients received consultation, triage and critical-care services. The figures show the extent of reliance on referral hospitals at a time when fighting and road closures are making it more difficult to transport patients and maintain the flow of medicines and supplies.
