The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it had delivered life-saving medical supplies to the southern city of Aden in Yemen, where most health facilities are “non-functional” due to fighting and critical shortages of supplies.
In a statement, the WHO said it had brought 46 tons of assistance, including trauma kits, medicines for treating malaria and diarrheal diseases and water and sanitation supplies for more than 84,000 people in six trucks as part of a United Nations convoy, World Bulletin reported.
“Access to healthcare in Aden is extremely limited due to constant fighting and most of the governorate’s 31 health facilities are non-functional due to critical shortages in medical supplies and fuel needed for generators.”
More than 3,200 people have been killed and over a million displaced in Yemen since a Saudi-led alliance of Arab countries launched airstrikes in late March to restore the country’s fugitive president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.
The UN says 21 million people need help, who constitute about 80% of the population.
Johannes Van Der Klaauw, the UN resident coordinator for Yemen, said the UN convoy arrived in Aden at the weekend, but that rations supplied by the World Food Program aboard several dozen trucks had been delayed.
“It took days and days to organize safe passage. It did arrive in Aden last Saturday. It was the first time we got a convoy into Aden for weeks,” Van Der Klaauw told reporters in Geneva.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also said he is “very much disappointed” that a UN-brokered humanitarian pause in fighting in Yemen did not take hold over the weekend because Saudi strikes continued to violate the truce, his spokesman said on Monday.
