More Than 13,000 Pregnant Women in Yemen’s Taiz Have Lost Access to Essential Healthcare Amid Fighting and Blocked Routes, the UN Says
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 1 minute ago, November 3, 2026
Midwives in and around Yemen’s Taiz are reporting more miscarriages and unsafe births as fighting cuts pregnant women off from care, the UN Population Fund says. More than 13,000 pregnant women have lost access to essential healthcare, and just 5 of the area’s 27 designated emergency maternity and newborn care facilities remain partly operational.
For about a month, clashes between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement have severely restricted movement into and out of Taiz. Humanitarian supplies can’t get through, and civilians can’t leave. Houthi forces have blocked key supply routes, including the Taiz-Aden corridor, deepening shortages of food, water and fuel.
The latest fighting has displaced 300,000 people across Yemen, with roughly half now staying in Taiz, the UN says. About 147,000 women and girls of childbearing age in and around the city have been cut off from essential health services.
War and displacement impose both physical and psychological strain on pregnant women, UNFPA says. Citing that strain, it anticipates about 1,500 obstetric emergencies in a displaced population of 6,400 pregnant women. UNFPA’s Yemen representative Francesco Galtieri put the estimated daily toll from childbirth complications at 3 women before fighting resumed this summer. Yemen’s maternal mortality rate was already the highest in the Arab region, he said.
At the Yemeni-Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital, Taiz’s main maternity facility, staff are delivering about 5 babies a day, down from 10 before the fighting. Women and medical workers are unable to reach the hospital because of shelling, insecurity and expensive fuel, Galtieri said; inside, most incubators are out of service for lack of fuel.
“Unless access restrictions are lifted in the coming days, the hospital itself could close,” he said.
Since early October, more than 800,000 people in Taiz and nearby areas have lost access to food assistance, according to the UN World Food Programme. Galtieri said pregnant women’s diets had dwindled to little beyond tea, bread or rice.
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