Yemen’s critically ill are trapped as war closes the country’s airports

A re-ignition of Yemen’s war has left the chronically sick and needing treatment trapped in the country. Save Share Sanaa, Yemen –Rajaa Ghirsan, a 50-year-old seamstress from Sanaa, Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital, can barely speak or breathe due to obstructions in her airway. Her vocal cord paralysis and severe complications in her larynx have left her dependent on a device fitted around her neck to keep air flowing and stave off suffocation. The device has to be replaced every two months and costs $100 each time. She has undergone six operations in Egypt and India since 2006 in an attempt to try to help her breathe normally, but she now needs another complex operation abroad to open her airway. As Yemen’s conflict-weakened health system lacks the infrastructure and specialist care required, she will need to head overseas for treatment. After registering with the Higher Medical Committee in Sanaa, the body responsible for arranging medical treatment abroad, she spent seven years trying to secure a seat on a once-weekly flight to Amman, where Yemeni patients have been treated. But repeated closures and air attacks have kept that flight out of reach, and she cannot afford the long overland journey to Aden airport, which is her only alternative out of the country. “The device helps her breathe a little, but it has worn her out and taken away her rest for years,” says Nouran al-Salawi, 28, Ghirsan’s daughter, who has cared for her mother for the past decade while raising two children of her own. “She is waiting for the moment she can have the last operation and be free of it, or she is waiting for death instead.” Ghirsan is among the many Yemenis who depend on Sanaa International Airport to get the medical care they need abroad. The airport is the main air link for millions living under Houthi control in the north, but it has been repeatedly shut since the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis closed it to commercial traffic in August 2016. A United Nations-brokered truce allowed a limited number of flights to resume in May 2022, but Israeli air attacks in 2025 damaged the airport and destroyed aircraft. In July, Yemeni government forces backed by Saudi Arabia struck its only working runway to prevent an Iranian plane with a Houthi delegation from landing. As of today, no regular flights leave the capital, while Aden, the seat of the internationally recognised government and the main alternative for patients in the north, has also come under attack....