Yemen's Taiz under siege: baby dies as cholera and dengue spread

A video circulating on social media since November 10 shows a woman from Jabal Sabir holding the body of an infant wrapped in a white shroud. The baby, Gaza Ali Abdulmughni al-Shaqab, fell ill and died after her family could not get her emergency care, according to the Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, which said the vehicle taking her to hospital was attacked by Houthi forces on the mountain roads. The Houthis have been besieging al-Shaqab, a front-line area in Taiz governorate, since tightening their encirclement of the city in early October by cutting the last major supply route into government-held areas.

The Yemeni government says the siege has choked off food, safe drinking water, medicines and fuel for nearly two million people in Taiz for more than a month. Human Rights Watch warned on October 29 that the blockade on civilians may amount to the war crime of using starvation as a method of warfare. The Houthis deny responsibility for the road closures and blame government forces, but HRW said residents, aid workers and UN officials all point to the Houthis.

The World Food Programme said on October 14 it had been unable to reach more than 600,000 people in Taiz who depend on humanitarian aid, calling the situation especially alarming and noting most districts face emergency levels of hunger. OCHA reported that nearly 250,000 people had lost access to essential healthcare, including more than 186,000 children under five, and that 12 hospitals were at risk of closing or had cut services because of fuel and supply shortages. The UN agency counted more than 1,400 cases of acute diarrhoea and suspected cholera in a single week.

Figures Al Jazeera obtained from Taiz's Epidemiological Surveillance Department show 5,642 cases across three disease categories in the latest four-week reporting period: 5,228 of acute watery diarrhoea, 232 suspected dengue fever and 182 suspected cholera. Department director Dr Yasin Abdulmalik said the diarrhoea count actually fell from the previous period because residents increasingly cannot reach health facilities at all. He said fuel shortages have driven up black-market prices and transport fares, and that more than twice the recorded number of patients were unable to get care.

Taysir al-Samiei, a health communications official at the governorate's Public Health and Population Office, told Al Jazeera that patients' ability to reach hospitals dropped by between 60 and 70 percent by the end of the siege's second week. Dr Fares al-Absi, a diabetes and endocrinology consultant, blamed unsafe water for the diarrhoea and cholera surge, saying only about 8 percent of Taiz's water needs are being met and most local wells are unfit to drink after access to the al-Dhabab basin was restricted. He said dengue is spreading through stagnant water and tonnes of uncollected rubbish, with the Houthis accused of blocking sanitation trucks from the city's western landfill.