The Coronavirus mortality rate in Aden Yemen can exceed wartime deaths

In the first half of May, the city recorded 950 deaths – nearly four times the 251 deaths throughout March, according to a Ministry of Health report.

The 950 deaths in two weeks in May represented almost half of the total casualties suffered by the city in 2015, when the country’s civil war raged.

At that time, Aden was devastated by heavy fighting, the streets were blown up by rockets and his houses were filled with bullets. Now the city’s biggest killer is silent.

“Yemen has faced war and cannot deal with three pandemics, economic collapse and war and the corona virus,” Dr. Ishraq Al-Subei, the health official responsible for the response to the disease, told CNN.

The official death toll of Covid-19 in southern Yemen is only 127. Health workers said they did not know the true number, due to low testing capacity. But the huge surge in deaths in Aden is seen as a warning of a coming of worse, as the health sector becomes overwhelmed and more people die from treatable diseases.

Chasing the hospital bed

Hmeid Mohammed, 38, experienced a painful journey that began with a mild fever at home.

His family could not find a hospital to take when his fever began to increase rapidly in early May. He was in a coma when he was treated by the only hospital in Aden designated to treat Covid-19 at the time.

“They revived him,” recalls Anwar Motref’s brother-in-law.

He was diagnosed with meningitis, another common disease in Yemen. As soon as he showed signs of improvement, the doctor advised him to leave the hospital so as not to be infected with Covid-19.

About a week later, his health deteriorated. Once again, the family went to a different hospital in an effort to get him treated, but with little success. Finally they found him on a bed in the emergency ward that he shared with six other people. Fluid filled his lungs and his kidneys failed.

The family has funds for medical treatment, but the Aden hospital is closed or full. The hunt for admission to a hospital that could carry out surgery and dialysis in time to save him failed.

Mohammed died in late May, robbing his three children and widow of the only bread winner.

“Who is to blame for all this? We don’t have a government or state or anyone to help us in this country,” Motref said at the family home on the rocky hill around Aden.

“To whom should we complain? We are bored with this life. Every morning we wake up to hear 10-15 people die,” he added.

Loss of aid and a collapsing health sector

The weapons in Aden have calmed down in recent months but the Yemen war has not disappeared.

Five-year conflict has begged the nation. At present more than half of the population depends on assistance for survival.

“We are short of one billion from our minimum target,” Lise Grande, head of UN humanitarian operations in Yemen, told CNN. “So, in Covid’s time what this meant was that we would see about half of the hospitals that we currently support in this country being closed – and that would happen in just the next few weeks.

“One week before the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in Yemen, we ran out of money and had to stop the benefits of 10,000 frontline health workers across the country. In the middle of Covid, this was very devastating,” he added.

There are only 60 hospital beds dedicated to Covid-19 in Aden, which has a population of around 800,000. These are in two hospitals operated by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The city has 18 ventilators, all of which continue to be used, according to MSF.

Doctors and aid workers say that most patients seek treatment at the hospital in the final stages of the disease, when it may be too late to save them. And in most cases, there is no capacity to care for them.

“Most cases are rejected because there are no ventilators available,” Dr. Farouk Abduallah Nagy, head of the isolation department at Gomhuria Hospital, told CNN.

“The health sector was already weak before the outbreak. And it’s getting worse and worse. The health sector is collapsing,” said Caroline Seguin, MSF communications officer in Aden.

More than 112,000 people have been killed in air strikes, shootings and bombings, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED).

Hundreds of thousands of people have been moved to camp as refugees from the war. There they face the risk of endemic diseases, malnutrition, and overcrowding – all conditions ideal for the spread of diseases such as Covid-19.

Mokhtar Ahmed, who is from the northern port city of Hodeidah, came to a camp on the outskirts of Aden three years ago.

“Cholera and war are one thing and corona is something else,” he told CNN, flanked by his two children.

“With war, we move from place to place and we stay … But with the corona, wherever you go, it will find you.”