UNFPA says only five of 27 emergency maternity hospitals still work in Yemen's Taiz

3 November 2026

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) briefed journalists in Geneva on the condition of women and girls caught in Yemen's renewed fighting. Francesco Galtieri, the UNFPA Representative in Yemen, spoke by video link from Aden. He said nearly 300,000 people have been displaced from the west coast and from Taiz, a threefold rise, and that more than half of them are women and children. More than a third of displaced families are headed by a woman. Taiz holds more than 13,000 pregnant women, about 6,400 of them displaced, and UNFPA expects roughly 1,500 obstetric emergencies among the displaced. Across Taiz only 5 of 27 designated emergency maternal and newborn hospitals are partly working. At the Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital in Taiz, incubators for premature babies have dropped from 40 to 10 because of fuel shortages. UNFPA says 129 community midwives and five mobile teams are still reaching women where access allows.