<\/p>\n
SANA\u2019A, Yemen \u2014 For more than <\/span>two weeks, Abdullah laid at home in al-Silw district, in Yemen\u2019s besieged southwestern governorate of Taiz, as his body slowly failed.<\/p>\n The 58-year-old had lived with kidney failure for two years, and his doctor had prescribed dialysis twice a week.<\/p>\n Since the siege, however, the fighting stood between al-Eissi and the dialysis center in Taiz city that kept him alive. Al-Eissi wouldn\u2019t let his family risk their lives to take him to the center.<\/p>\n \u201cMy father\u2019s condition deteriorated badly,\u201d said his son, Muadh, 38. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t move him to Taiz because the fighting had intensified.\u201d<\/p>\n About a week ago, al-Eissi died at home in his bed.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I saw my mother weeping for her husband, I felt helpless,\u201d Muadh said. \u201cIt might have been avoided if my father had reached his dialysis sessions on time.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAbout 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cAbout 60 percent of kidney failure patients in Taiz face the risk of death because they cannot reach the dialysis center,\u201d said Dr. Fouad al-Haddad, the hospital\u2019s director. \u201cBehind every number is a human being and a family living in anxiety, waiting for a chance to continue treatment that may never come.\u201d<\/p>\n The kidney-failure deaths are part of the toll of a wider regional war set off by an unprovoked<\/a> February attack<\/a> against Iran by Israel<\/a> and the United States. Estimates hold that 10,000 or more people have died during the war<\/a>, including both military and civilian deaths<\/a> across the region. Since the regional war reignited in Yemen this summer, according to the World Health Organization<\/a>, at least 800 people have been killed, with thousands wounded and tens of thousands displaced.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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,\u201d said Sina Toossi, a senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy. \u201cYemen\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n 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<\/a> insurgency, including the capital of Sana\u2019a, saw their prominence in the Iran war grow with attacks against shipping channels surrounding the Arabian Peninsula.<\/p>\n The Yemeni civil war itself had been a long-simmering conflict when the Iran war broke out, straining a 2022 truce signed by the Houthis and their rivals, including Saudi Arabia, which was broken this July when the Houthis attacked a regional Saudi airport. Throughout August, the Houthis launched missile, drone, and ground attacks across the front lines against the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed Yemeni government.<\/p>\n In September, the Houthis seized strategic areas on Yemen\u2019s coast and imposed a naval blockade that cut off the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, while firing missiles deeper into Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n In early October, Yemeni government forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition launched an operation aimed at retaking the coast and pushing into Sana\u2019a.<\/p>\n As they moved inland to consolidate their coastal gains, Houthi forces pushed into the highlands around Taiz, a strategically located city controlled by the government. In short order, the insurgents severed the main mountain road linking Taiz to Aden, another city also controlled by the government.<\/p>\n The blockade trapped more than 600,000 residents and sent food and fuel prices soaring. The U.N. World Food Program warned<\/a> that Taiz\u2019s wheat and flour stocks are close to running out.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have confirmed cases of death and cases of severe impact,\u201d said Tawfiq al-Humaidi, head of the SAM Organization for Rights and Liberties, a Geneva-based international body monitoring violence in Yemen, who said fighting on roads near Taiz has cut off medical supplies from the city. \u201cThose who are dying and suffering are among the victims of the Iranian war, which drove the Houthis to expand toward Taiz and Bab al-Mandeb.\u201d<\/p>\n On October 14, the Yemeni government formally petitioned<\/a> the U.N. Security Council for immediate, practical intervention to lift the \u201csuffocating siege.\u201d<\/p>\n Any action would be too late for families like the al-Eissis.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taiz is Yemen\u2019s cultural capital and its third-largest city. Healthcare facilities there serve a huge geographical area. Al-Haddad, the head of the al-Jumhuri Hospital, said patients hail from across the governorate.<\/p>\n \u201cThey come from the West Coast, al-Mawasit, Jabal Habashi, al-Shamayatayn, Sama, al-Silw, al-Misrakh, and al-Maafer areas,\u201d he said, \u201cwhere distances are long and the hardship of travel is multiplied by rough roads and security conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n The kidney dialysis center has 270 registered patients.<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn\u2019t count the patients from outside the city who haven\u2019t been able to reach us,\u201d said Mahyoub, the head of the dialysis center. \u201cPatients from al-Misrakh, al-Aqroud, al-Shamayatayn, al-Hujariya, al-Turba, and Jabal Habashi localities used to come to us. Now getting here has become extremely difficult, with the fighting and the restrictions on movement into the city.\u201d<\/p>\n Ahlam Ali Abdo, 33, walks about 30 kilometers from her village in Jabal Habashi to reach the center, crossing rough roads and areas where gunfire and shelling ring out. The walk, extremely risky for a kidney failure patient, takes between 5 to 9 hours. After treatment, she faces the same distance back, uphill, to her three children. Some days the road is too dangerous, and Abdo waits for hours in the city.<\/p>\n \u201cI cry constantly of pain and exhaustion and worry that I wouldn\u2019t be able to see my children again. My condition is miserable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Her husband stays home with the children. Bringing any of them with her, she said, would put the whole family in danger.<\/p>\n Mahyoub\u2019s center tried and failed to find her housing in the city. Yesterday, on Friday, another dialysis patient took her in, for fear she would be killed on the road.<\/p>\n\n
Yemen in the Iran War<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Cut Off<\/strong> From Care<\/h2>\n