Al-Houthi fights vaccinations from the pulpits of mosques.. The high death rate among mothers and newborns
English - Sunday 05 March 2023 الساعة 04:51 pm
Sana'a, NewsYemen:
The Houthi militia, the Iranian arm in Yemen, claimed the death of a woman and 6 newborns every two hours, and the death of a Yemeni child every ten minutes, at a time when the militia is organizing inciting seminars against immunization programs for childhood and motherhood and campaigns to vaccinate children against diseases.
On Saturday, March 4, an organization affiliated with the Houthi militia claimed the death of about 60 children out of every 1,000 births, in addition to the death of 52,000 children annually, in an attempt to hold the "coalition" responsible for the results of the worsening health conditions, since its takeover of state institutions, including health facilities and converting them into private facilities for investment and achieving exorbitant financial profits for the benefit of influential members of the group.
On Friday, March 3, 2023, Friday preachers loyal to the Houthi militia launched incitement campaigns against vaccinations and immunization programs for childhood and motherhood, through mosque platforms, calling on parents to stop vaccinating their children, claiming that the vaccines are an external conspiracy aimed at harming children, and that they are made of oil derivatives without convincing scientific research.
While looting humanitarian aid, including food baskets and medicines, and continuing to loot the salaries of state employees and parents, the Houthi militia claimed that the blockade has increased malnutrition rates to six million people, claiming that more than 2.3 million children under five years of age suffer from malnutrition and 632 thousand children suffer from severe acute malnutrition, which threatens their lives with death during the current year.
The militia claimed to have recorded about 4.5 million cases of epidemic diseases, including 226 cases of polio, one million and 136 thousand and 360 cases of malaria, and 14 thousand and 508 suspected cases of cholera, in addition to the death of 15 children and the infection of 1,400 others with measles in 7 governorates during the year 2022.
It also claimed the registration of 5,000 cases of kidney failure, and 35,000 cases of cancer, including more than 1,000 children, while "the number of children with heart defects has reached more than 3,000 children who need to travel abroad for treatment."
Systematic destruction of the health sector and successive campaigns to fight vaccines
Since its invasion of Sana'a and its coup against the state authorities in September 2014, the Houthi militia continues to destroy the health sector in various ways, including stopping immunization campaigns, preventing the entry of vaccines, and getting involved in introducing spoiled and expired medicines, which led to the spread of epidemics and deadly diseases, and an increase in the number of deaths, especially children.
Among them, dozens of children died as a result of being injected with a spoiled dose of medicine (leukemia patients) in Kuwait Hospital.
The medical sector has been greatly affected by the illegal financial royalties that the Houthi militia collects from pharmaceutical companies and private hospitals, in addition to its looting of medical aid provided by international organizations to Yemen.
The Houthi militia caused the spread of a number of epidemics and diseases. Yemen had declared in previous years that it was free of them. In 2016, it refused to allow the World Health Organization to implement a campaign to vaccinate children against cholera in the areas under its control.
Instead of that vaccination campaign, the militia demanded that the international organization provide specific medicines for treating its wounded, which led to the death of 2,275 cases of cholera, according to the organization, which later directed those vaccination doses to South Sudan.
In the context of its fight against immunization and vaccination campaigns, the Houthi militia launched in 2018 a campaign of warnings against the immunization campaign against the "diphtheria" suffocation epidemic, to announce later the spread of the deadly "diphtheria" epidemic and the recording of hundreds of deaths, including 16 children, in Al Hodeida governorate alone.
