It is nearing midnight on a chilly and beautiful January night in Yemen. The hum of the hospital generator outside my window, overlaid with the sound of gunfire (sometimes celebratory, sometimes not), is something I have grown used to over the past three months.
My phone rings: it is the duty doctor calling for back-up after receiving multiple gunshot patients in the emergency room of Al Nasser general hospital in Al Dhalegovernorate.
My heart doesn’t race like it used to. From never seeing gunshot wounds back home in India, to now seeing them on a daily basis, I am learning a lot here in Yemen. This night is busier than most. One patient has had his left eye socket blown out by a bullet and is still talking coherently – it is like a scene from a movie. Another has a gunshot wound to the head and is being mechanically ventilated, while a third has multiple gunshots through his abdomen. Our medical team manages these patients calmly and efficiently. Later the staff joke with me about how, in the middle of last year, when the frontline was at their doorstep, this was daily life for them.
The resilience of people here is something I will always admire. Rabia, one of our cleaners, goes about her daily routine with a smile. Not for a second would you guess that she has lost all three of her sons in the war. Larger-than-life billboards of their handsome faces rise over the streets, along with the images of many others who have lost their lives.
War wounds aren’t the only medical needs we have to tackle. Yemen is grappling with a dual burden: malnutrition and vaccine-preventable diseases on the one hand, chronic conditions like heart disease and strokes on the other. Mental health issues are completely ignored. Due to the war and uncontrolled inflation, healthcare is either unavailable or inaccessible to large parts of the population.
There are severe shortages of fuel, food, electricity and water, too.
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