Since May 2021, MSF together with the Ministry of Health (MoH) has been running the maternal and neonatal services in Al Jamhouri hospital (AJH), in Taiz City. MSF also offers technical support, financial incentives to Ministry of Health staff, medical and logistical supplies to run the maternity unit including services such as caesarean sections (C-sections), antenatal (ANC) and postnatal care (PNC) for pregnant women, and a neonatal unit for new-borns and infants.
The majority of the pregnant women arriving in Al Jamhouri hospital come from within the city as well as from the surrounding rural areas. Those from rural areas usually present late at the hospital with high-risk pregnancies, attributed in part to the lack of consistent ANC and PNC monitoring, or due to absence of the needed medical specialities and/or equipment in their areas, which drives them to seek medical care elsewhere, often traveling long distances to reach health facilities. Between August 2021 and August 2022, MSF team in Al Jamhouri hospital assisted in 6,739 deliveries, out of which 1,193 were C-sections - an indication of the high number of complex pregnancies arriving at the hospital. According to our medical teams, some of the women attending ANC consultations in Al Jamhouri hospital were attending for the first time, while already in the 8th or 9th month of their pregnancy. Patients continue to undergo long and sometimes dangerous trips through mountainous areas and destroyed roads in order to access adequate health services.
The need for sufficient high-quality and free-of-cost reproductive healthcare services in Taiz City and surrounding areas remains very high, and our support in the area contributes directly to the improving the lives of mothers and their children. Since MSF started supporting AJH, the neonatal mortality has dropped from 23.6% to 9.9% between August 2021 and August 2022. Medical teams have also conducted more than 17,000 ANC consultations and over 3,000 PNC consultations for the same period.