Yemen's Health Minister Warns Failing Funding Could Collapse Medical Services in Some Regions

Yemen's healthcare infrastructure is teetering on the edge of total collapse in certain areas, according to a stark warning issued by the country's top health official, who says a continuing decline in international funding could soon leave entire communities without access to essential medical care.

Minister of Public Health and Population Qasim Buhaibeh told Al Jazeera that the sector's capacity to respond to new waves of displacement caused by the country's protracted conflict has been severely eroded, with dwindling resources already forcing the closure of health facilities and creating critical shortages of medicines, medical supplies and fuel.

The minister's assessment paints a grim picture of a system stretched far beyond its limits. He cautioned that unless funding levels are urgently restored, some parts of Yemen risk losing health services altogether, leaving millions of people without even the most basic forms of care.

According to Buhaibeh, the services most at risk include emergency care, maternal and child healthcare, vaccination and nutrition programmes, as well as life-sustaining treatments such as dialysis and cancer care. These are precisely the kinds of services that vulnerable populations depend on most, and their discontinuation would have immediate and potentially fatal consequences for patients who have no alternative sources of treatment.

The funding shortfall driving this crisis is severe. Health data updated through June 2026 indicates that approximately 19.3 million people across Yemen require health assistance, yet the international response has secured only 17 percent of the amount needed to meet that demand. That gap between identified need and available resources represents one of the most dramatic funding deficits in any humanitarian sector operating in the country.

Buhaibeh also reported that the proportion of health facilities functioning at full capacity has likely fallen below 50 percent. This figure represents a further deterioration from previous estimates, including data cited by the World Health Organization indicating that 60 percent of facilities had been operating at full capacity. The downward trend suggests that even facilities that remain nominally open are increasingly unable to deliver the full range of services their patients require.

The conflict itself continues to generate new humanitarian pressures. The minister cited figures showing that 134,550 people have been displaced by fighting between June and September 22, with the majority of those newly uprooted concentrated in the governorates of Taiz, Lahij and Aden. The sudden arrival of large numbers of displaced families places additional strain on health facilities in host communities that were already struggling with limited resources and staff.

This internal displacement data aligns with separate findings from the International Organization for Migration, which has recorded nearly 130,000 people, or approximately 30,000 households, displaced across seven governorates since fighting escalated in early September between the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognised Yemeni government coalition forces. The two sets of figures together underscore the scale of the ongoing displacement crisis and its direct implications for health service delivery.

Compounding these challenges is a serious information gap. Buhaibeh said the reporting of health data from Houthi-controlled areas has been suspended for nearly a year, which prevents authorities from assembling a complete nationwide picture of the epidemiological situation. Without reliable data from large parts of the country, health planners are forced to operate in the dark, making it far more difficult to detect outbreaks early, allocate limited resources effectively, or coordinate a coherent national response.

The minister warned that displacement, malnutrition and low vaccination coverage are converging at the same time as outbreaks of cholera, measles and polio. This combination of factors is particularly dangerous because each one amplifies the effects of the others. Malnourished children are more susceptible to infectious diseases, low immunisation rates allow preventable illnesses to spread rapidly through crowded displacement settings, and disrupted water and sanitation systems create fertile conditions for cholera transmission.

The scale of the measles problem alone is alarming. Buhaibeh noted that more than 27,000 confirmed measles cases were recorded in 2025, a figure that reflects the consequences of declining vaccination coverage over years of conflict. Measles is a highly contagious disease that can be prevented through routine immunisation, but when health systems break down and vaccination campaigns are interrupted, outbreaks become inevitable and can spread with devastating speed among unvaccinated populations.

The nutritional situation is equally dire. Around half of Yemen's children under the age of five are suffering from chronic malnutrition, according to the minister. Chronic malnutrition stunts physical and cognitive development, weakens immune systems and leaves children far more vulnerable to the diseases that are already circulating. The combination of widespread malnutrition and active disease outbreaks creates conditions in which child mortality can rise sharply, even from illnesses that would ordinarily be treatable.

The cumulative effect of these overlapping crises is that Yemen's health system is being asked to do more with less at precisely the moment when the demands placed upon it are greatest. Each new wave of displacement brings additional patients into facilities that lack the staff, supplies and fuel to treat them. Each month of reduced funding pushes more clinics toward closure. And each outbreak of preventable disease signals that the protective systems meant to keep populations healthy have already been severely compromised.

The implications extend beyond immediate medical care. When health services collapse, the consequences ripple through families and communities. Children miss vaccinations that would protect them for a lifetime. Mothers lose access to skilled care during pregnancy and childbirth. Patients with chronic conditions such as kidney failure or cancer face the prospect of interrupted treatment. The social and economic costs of these losses will be felt long after the current crisis has passed.

For the international community, the minister's warning represents an urgent appeal. Yemen's health sector is not facing a gradual decline that can be managed over time; it is confronting the prospect of sudden and potentially irreversible collapse in some areas. Restoring funding to adequate levels would not simply preserve services that currently exist, it would prevent the kind of systemic failure that, once it occurs, can take years to reverse even after resources become available again.

Whether donors will respond to this warning remains uncertain, but the message from Yemen's health ministry is unambiguous. Without a significant and immediate infusion of resources, large parts of the country could soon find themselves without functioning health services, and the most vulnerable Yemenis, including children, pregnant women and the chronically ill, will bear the heaviest cost of that failure.