19-year-old Mona calculated that the 40-kilometer journey from her mountain village to the maternity hospital would take four hours on a camel. However, without roads and in bad weather, it took a whole seven hours until he reaches a place where he will be safe brought into the world her first child.

“Every step of the camel was a knife for me,” he admits. And when the camel could not go any further, the pregnant woman dismounted and walked the rest of the way.

Mona is not the only woman in her Mahwit province. Yemeni who risks her life to have a baby. Badi Saad Hospital is the only medical facility left, where the thousands of women she serves arrive on foot or by camel from their remote, remote villages.

“The road was rough,” recalls the 19-year-old, who describes the route as “a physically and mentally exhausting journey.” “There were times when I prayed to God to take me with him and protect my child so that I could get rid of the pain,” she says.

Mona doesn’t remember arriving at the maternity ward but she remembers how she was filled with hope and relief hear the first cry her child, whom she and her husband named Jarrah, the surgeon who saved her.

Usually, on the difficult path of childbirth, pregnant women are accompanied by husbands, relatives or simple fellow travelers.

One of them, 33-year-old Salma Abdu, who accompanied a woman about to give birth, says that halfway they saw a dead pregnant woman.

“We need roads, hospitals, pharmacies. We are alone in this place. Those who are lucky give birth safely. Others die halfway through, also suffering along the way,” she says.

in Yemen, a woman dies every two hours during childbirth for predictable reasonsaccording to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

According to UNFPA, less than half of births are attended by a doctor, and only a third of births are in a health facility. In addition, two-fifths of the Yemeni population live at least an hour from the nearest fully functioning public hospital.

The civil war in Yemen, which has raged since 2014 and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, has crippled the country’s health care system and infrastructure, making it impossible for people to move easily and unhindered.

In addition, hospitals are experiencing a serious shortage of specialized staff, equipment and medicines.

Source: BBC