Yemen's war reignites: critically ill patients stranded as airports shut

Sanaa, Yemen – Rajaa Ghirsan, 50, a seamstress living in Sanaa, the Houthi-controlled capital, can barely speak or breathe because her airway is obstructed. She suffers from vocal cord paralysis and severe laryngeal complications, and relies on a device worn around her neck to keep air flowing and prevent suffocation. The device must be replaced every two months, at a cost of $100 each time.

Since 2006 she has undergone six surgeries in Egypt and India aimed at helping her breathe normally, but she now needs another complex operation abroad to open her airway. Yemen's health system has been weakened by conflict, poor infrastructure and a shortage of specialists, leaving her with no choice but to seek treatment overseas.

After registering with the Higher Medical Committee in Sanaa – the body responsible for arranging treatment abroad – she spent seven years trying to secure a place on the weekly flight to Amman, where Yemeni patients once received care. But repeated closures and air strikes have kept that flight out of reach, and she cannot afford the long overland journey to Aden airport – the only remaining option for leaving the country.

"The device helps her breathe a little, but it has worn down her strength and robbed her of sleep for years," said Nouran al-Salawi, 28, her daughter, who has cared for her mother for a decade while raising two young children. "She is waiting for the moment of her final surgery to be free of it, or waiting for death."

Ghirsan is among many Yemenis who depend on Sanaa international airport to travel abroad for treatment. It is the main aviation hub for millions of people living under Houthi control in the north, but the airport has been closed repeatedly since August 2016, when the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis shut it to commercial traffic.

A UN-brokered ceasefire allowed limited flights to resume from May 2022, but Israeli air strikes in 2025 damaged the airport and destroyed aircraft. In July, Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces struck the only functioning runway to prevent an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation from landing.

No regular flights now leave the capital, while Aden – home to the internationally recognised government and the main alternative for northern patients – has also come under attack.

Anis al-Asbahi, spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera that the repeated closure of Sanaa airport over the past decade has affected about 400,000 patients, 250,000 of whom need treatment abroad. Flight disruptions have also hit more than 125,000 cancer patients facing medicine shortages.

He said the situation has led to shortages of more than 1,600 medicines, including 12 cancer drugs whose import is banned. More than 40,000 patients with thalassemia and haemolytic anaemia also lack the iron chelators and intravenous solutions their treatment requires.

A photo accompanying the article shows Houthi soldiers standing guard during a unilateral release of prisoners of war in Sanaa, Yemen, on October 17, 2026. According to a statement by Abdul-Qader al-Murtada, head of the Houthi Committee for Prisoner Affairs, the force unilaterally released 159 prisoners of war loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

Paying in money and lives

Fighting between government forces and the Houthis has reignited in recent months, bringing new restrictions on the movement of aid and people.

This month, UN special envoy Hans Grundberg told the Security Council that Yemen had slid back into full-scale war. Aden airport has been attacked twice this month, most recently on October 16, when two missiles landed about 500 metres from a Yemenia plane preparing to take off for Cairo.

With Sanaa airport out of service, Aden under attack and instability this year in Seiyun – a city in the eastern province of Hadramout that has another airport – patients in northern Yemen have very few options left.

Mohammed Shajara, 30, had sought to reach Tehran in June to treat his five-year-old daughter, who is paralysed in both lower limbs. But he was stranded in Tehran when the government blocked Iranian flights to and from Sanaa in July, and the two returned without treatment. Aden was the next option, but the journey from Sanaa takes about 14 hours and passes through dozens of checkpoints on both sides of the front line. With the airport under repeated attack, he postponed.

Abdulkarim Abdullah, 60, has kidney failure and depends on weekly dialysis in Sanaa. Regular treatment has strained the family's finances, so they sought a definitive cure. He planned to fly from Sanaa to Amman, but the subsequent suspension of flights to Jordan left him with no way out of the capital. When Seiyun airport also stopped operating, the family switched to Aden.

To get there, his brother, Mohammed Abdullah, had to pay about $2,300 for the journey and prepare to fly. "Car hire from Sanaa to Aden costs $200, a hotel before the flight $500, security permits for the two of us $400, plane tickets $1,200," Mohammed said. To raise the money, he sold his brother's wife's gold, then sold his own car.

"Despite all our efforts, my brother never reached the airport. He died on the road to Aden in January," Mohammed said.

Aden international airport is one of the main aviation hubs in the area controlled by Yemen's internationally recognised government.

Trapped by war

Fouad al-Haddad, director of al-Jumhuri hospital in the southwestern city of Taiz, said other patients have died waiting for treatment abroad or because of restrictions on movement inside the country.

"The closure of main roads around Taiz forces travellers to take long detours through mountain bends and difficult terrain, journeys that take more time and energy, while many patients are too weak to endure them, not to mention the security risks on routes near the fighting," he said.

According to government figures, nearly 147,000 people were displaced across Yemen in September, more than 80,000 of them to Taiz. The city is absorbing most of the Yemenis newly displaced by fighting elsewhere.

Nadia al-Rashidi, head of Hayat Jadida (New Life), a local NGO in Hadramout, said flights from al-Rayyan airport in Mukalla to Aden, and from there to Cairo, now run only once a week. Al-Ghaydah airport in neighbouring al-Mahra province is also closed, while al-Rayyan and Seiyun have only partially reopened since forces linked to the Southern Transitional Council (STC) were pushed out of the south in January.

People flying to Egypt and Jordan also need security permits. According to al-Rashidi, the normal process takes about half a month, while expediting it costs $200.

No side escapes the toll

Aref al-Hawshabi, director-general of the National Centre for Health Education and Media at the health ministry in Aden, said 1,170 patients from government-controlled provinces have submitted medical files to receive treatment abroad under the ministry's free support programme.

"The real need is much higher, because many patients cannot even submit a file," he said.

Conditions commonly requiring treatment abroad include cancer and blood diseases; bone marrow, liver and kidney transplants; cochlear implants and corneal grafts; heart disease; scoliosis; and congenital malformations of the reproductive organs.

According to al-Hawshabi, flight disruptions and airport closures delay these patients and put them at serious risk, especially those with fixed appointments at hospitals abroad.

"Some who make it abroad find it hard to get home and must stay longer than planned with money they do not have, while others face obstacles entering India and Jordan even after overcoming hurdles at home."

In September, government health minister Qasim Buhaibeh warned that some areas could lose health services entirely if funding continues to decline. He said 19.3 million people in Yemen need health support while the new response programme has received only 17 percent of the funding it needs, and dialysis and cancer treatment are among the services most at risk.

There is currently no medical evacuation programme in either part of the country.

Doctors at hospitals across Yemen are seeing the impact of travel restrictions and the race against time to get patients treated.

"I see the price Yemenis pay every day right here in the wards," Fouad al-Haddad of al-Jumhuri hospital said. "What we have now are bodies exhausted by illness and medical needs that cannot be postponed."

This article was produced in partnership with Egab.