Yemen desperately needs health workers. Unfortunately, many of them are fleeing

CAIRO, Egypt — Hospitals across Yemen are short of electricity, running low on medicines and operating under threat of bombing.

As though that weren’t enough, they are also increasingly short-staffed.

Why? Many of the nurses and other medical workers in Yemen come from other countries. When the Saudi-led bombing campaign began on March 25, foreign embassies began evacuating their nationals.

“Many of [the] hospitals depend on foreign staff as well as national Yemeni staff,” says Sameh Kirollos, of Doctors Without Borders. “Some foreign staff asked to go back [to their countries] or are not feeling safe to go to their jobs, so this is putting much more pressure on the health system.”

Precise numbers of foreign medical workers in Yemen are hard to come by, but health workers say they’re a significant part of the health industry. A number of Yemeni civilians and activists documenting the events on the ground have reported their departure. Only the foreign workers who come from places more dangerous than Yemen — like Syria — are left.

Those who work in hospitals say the loss of foreign staff is a big problem.

A member of the International Committee of the Red Cross takes pictures of the wreckage of a Yemeni airforce military plane on the tarmac of the rebel-controlled international airport of Sanaa on May 5, 2015. A day earlier, the aircraft was destroyed by an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition.

“Many of the hospital staff are from India and from Pakistan and from Egypt. They’ve all left the country. Only doctors from Syria are still here,” says Lamees Saleh Abdallah, an assistant at the Almani el Yemeni hospital in Sanaa.

Even some Yemeni staff who live far away from hospitals are no longer able to get to their jobs. 

Healthcare in Yemen has never been a guarantee. In 2014, well before this round of fighting began, 8.6 million Yemenis — around one-third of the country — did not have access to health care, according to the UN.

The shortages of staff and medicines are keeping some patients from traveling to hospitals — a journey that’s often dangerous in its own right. Locals say this means people with treatable conditions who choose to stay home are getting sicker. 

Hospitals themselves are also under threat. On April 25, staff and patients fled a public hospital in Haradh in northwestern Yemen because they were afraid it would be shelled. The facility serves more than 150,000 people and, according to Doctors Without Borders, was the last hospital in the area to remain open since the shelling began.

More from GlobalPost: Here is what the people who know Yemen best have to say about it