On Feb. 21, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams in Aden and Al-Daleh, in southern Yemen, tended to 39 people who had been injured during outbreaks of violence connected to national elections. A local separatist movement boycotted the vote, which led to clashes in the south, particularly in Aden, the region’s main city.

MSF supported three hospitals in Aden by deploying medical and surgical teams and financially supporting healthcare for the wounded. The three hospitals admitted a total of 37 people on Tuesday.

Yemen © Agnes Montanari
Huth hospital in northern Yemen in 2010, where MSF continues to work. Patients are waiting in the corridor to see the hospital’s only full-time doctor.

Additionally, an MSF team working in the emergency room of Al-Daleh hospital, some 120 kilometers further north treated two gunshot victims.

The situation in the region remains tense, so the teams will continue to support these hospitals in the coming days, in case there is another influx of wounded people.

For over a year now, MSF has been working around the main areas of violence in southern Yemen – particularly in the governorates of Aden, Abyan, Al-Daleh and Lahj – supporting emergency rooms, transferring wounded patients, and helping to provide primary healthcare for the resident population and people displaced by the conflict in Abyan.

In 2011, MSF conducted more than 15,000 emergency room consultations and performed 1,500 surgical procedures in these programs.

For its activities in Yemen, MSF does not accept funding from any government and relies solely on private donations.

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