Liverpool, the lifeline to a hospital in diseased and bomb-torn Yemen
It was not the air strikes bringing the intensive care unit at Sabeen hospital to the brink of collapse, nor was it the wave of children beginning to show up with signs of cholera, or the shortages of medicine to treat them. It was the bus fare.
Staff at the hospital in Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, had not been paid their salaries in months and though they were eager to come to work, many did not have even the 100 riyal (30p) for the bus each day. Some nurses walked for two hours to reach the hospital.
Dr Najla al-sonboli, the head of paediatrics, knew the situation was not sustainable.
The intensive care unit and Accident & Emergency could not keep running with ragged staff who often did not have food for themselves or their families.
So Dr al-sonboli did as she often did when she needed advice and turned to old friends at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, where she obtained her masters and PHD before the outbreak of war in Yemen in 2015.
Her former colleagues in Liverpool moved quickly to start raising funds in £5 and £10 increments from a global network of epidemiologists and public health experts.
Soon a lifeline was opened from Merseyside to distant Sana’a. The doctor and her team at Sabeen hospital are on the front line of Yemen’s cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,800 people this year and spread to 21 of the country’s 23 provinces. More than 400,000 suspected cases have been detected.
Each day, Sabeen hospital, which is being supported by Unicef, takes in around 200 cholera patients. Often they are children whose malnourished bodies shudder with constant vomiting and diarrhoea as their helpless parents look on.
“I wish we could do more,” said Dr Louis Ceuvas, one of the Liverpool physicians who helped organise the funds and who supervised Dr alsonboli’s PHD.
“This war has taken Yemen back 20 years but people like Najla are still there working and showing a lot of courage.”
Each month, the group sends £500 to £1,000 to help make sure staff can get to work and afford a meal during long shifts. “The amount of money is small but it’s made a great difference,” Dr al-sonboli told The Daily Telegraph. “The emergency room didn’t collapse and we can cope with patients.”
Abdul Hamed al-zalab, 42, a school administrator, was one of the desperate parents in Dr al-sonboli’s ward. His two daughters, Alanoud, eight, and Azahraa, 14, both came
‘This war has taken Yemen back 20 years but people like Najla still work there and show a lot of courage’
down with cholera after the holy month of Ramadan and both survived after treatment at Sabeen hospital.
The family sold their furniture to raise money for the oral rehydration and other medicines needed to keep the girls alive.
Their brother Ali had been killed a few months before in an air strike conducted by the Saudi-led coalition, which has so far killed 10,000 civilians, and is armed and supported by the UK and US.
“In Yemen, we are killed by the bombing or the cholera or the starvation. If you are not killed by the aggression, then you are killed by the cholera or starvation,” said Mr Zalab, wearily. Facing a crippling shortage of healthcare facilities, Unicef has tried to mobilise a volunteer army to go house to house to counter the spread of cholera. Fathyah Ahmed Faraj, a 45-year-old mother of nine, walks through her neighbourhood of Raisin Hill in her niqab, knocking on doors and issuing brisk advice to frightened residents.
In one home, she finds a 35-year-old with cholera whose family are afraid to go near him.
“Make him bathe with soap and don’t eat near him,” she tells them, “but don’t isolate him all the time. He will become melancholy otherwise.”
Two of her own children had cholera and she knows how crushing it can be for a sick person to be alone.
Back at the Sabeen hospital, Dr al-sonboli arrives for another day of work and walks through a lobby that has been hit countless time by bombs dropped from Saudi or UAE aircraft. She has had to moved house three times because of strikes on her own home.
“Nowhere is really safe,” she mused. “Whenever we move from one place to another, the danger is never far away.”
She thinks about Liverpool sometimes and how homesick she was during her first three months in the city. Over time, she made friends with both locals and internationals and she remembers long nights at Kimos, a restaurant that serves Middle Eastern fare alongside British staples.
“I think of Liverpool as a second home,” she said. “Maybe one day, if the good times come back, I can go back to Liverpool.”