Lives of 3,000 at risk due to lack of medicines in Yemen’s Ibb

Due to the lack of hospital beds, Yemeni women receive treatment in tents adjacent to the a hospital’s garden in Yemen on 10 March 2019 [Mohammed Hamoud/Anadolu Agency]

Lack of cancer drugs and chemotherapy medication is threatening the lives of more than 3,000 cancer patients in the central Yemeni governorate of Ibb.

Director of Al-Amal Oncology Centre in Ibb, Dr. Baleegh Taweel, said 50 per cent of the anti-cancer drugs and chemotherapy medication in the centre have finished and no alternative is available, adding that the total number of cancer patients in the governorate reached 3,150 people, including 400 children and 800 displaced people from other governorates.

The centre receives about 50 patients per day, Al-Taweel said, stressing that patients suffer from extremely difficult humanitarian conditions due to the centre receiving only intermittent support.

Al-Taweel said the Oncology Centre has accumulated debts of $40,000 to pharmacies, radiology centres and laboratories.

He called on the official authorities in the country, international humanitarian organisations, local institutions, businessmen and philanthropists to donate and help provide the necessary assistance to the centre, to save the lives of patients.

READ: UNHCR aids 250,000 displaced people in Yemen

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