Yemen

Healthcare

International Medical Corps helps primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare facilities remain functional. We provide a range of services, including maternal and child healthcare, sexual and reproductive health services, mental health and psychosocial support, and prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases. We deliver chemotherapy and other supportive drugs to cancer patients.

We provide essential medical supplies to health facilities and support sustainable energy solutions by installing solar panels to facilitate the storage of medicines and nutrition supplies under ideal temperature conditions. These interventions support immunisation campaigns for children and women.

Mobile medical units provide us with the flexibility to help internally displaced persons (IDPs) and those who reside in hard-to-reach areas and are unable to reach static healthcare centers.

Nutrition

In a country where food security has been a challenge in even the best of times, we implement nutrition-specific curative and preventive interventions to address growing needs. Years of war have left four out of 10 Yemenis acutely malnourished—in parts of Yemen, acute malnutrition among children under 5 is at the highest level ever recorded.

We support the treatment of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) among children aged 6 months to 5 years, as well as among pregnant and lactating women (PLWs), through outpatient therapeutic and targeted supplementary feeding programmes. We refer children with SAM requiring further treatment due to medical complications to stabilisation centres, working in coordination with WHO and UNICEF.

We also support infant and young-child feeding (IYCF) spaces that provide individual counselling to PLWs and encourage them to adopt optimal feeding practices for their children during the first 1,000 days of life. To prevent malnutrition at the household level, our community health and nutrition networks actively detect and refer cases while promoting IYCF and hygiene practices among women and caregivers.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

Our WASH interventions focus on promoting public health and mitigating the increased risk of diseases caused by reduced access to clean water, basic sanitation and hygiene. Since 2012, we have reached millions of Yemenis with WASH services.

We collaborate with local authorities to rehabilitate and protect water sources, including installing solar-powered pumps for water systems. Where the water infrastructure is damaged, we also deliver water by truck to health facilities and IDPs.

Our WASH team supports the construction of institutional and communal latrines, water and sewage systems and medical waste zones, which have helped to reduce public health risks of nosocomial infections. We also support cleaning campaigns and provide infection prevention-and-control (IPC) kits, hygiene kits and cholera kits.

We train community health volunteers on key hygiene messages and build the capacity of health facility staff by training them on medical waste disposal. We also help communities and local authorities take ownership of WASH projects to ensure their sustainability and effectiveness.

Food Security and Livelihoods

International Medical Corps’ integrated approach to FSL involves providing food baskets and unconditional cash assistance to vulnerable households, prioritising those with children under 5 years and PLWs. Our assistance enables them to meet their basic household food needs in a dignified way and avoid negative coping mechanisms, such as selling livelihood assets to purchase food.

Unconditional cash assistance empowers caregivers, increases access to safe and nutritious food, reduces harmful coping strategies and mitigates acute malnutrition relapses. In 2023, we distributed more than $600,000 to 935 vulnerable households affected by acute malnutrition.

Protection

More than 16 million Yemenis will likely require protection assistance in 2024. We place the protection of the people we serve at the centre of our humanitarian response by prioritising safety and dignity, promoting meaningful access to services, ensuring the participation of targeted groups and promoting human rights without causing harm.

Our gender-based violence (GBV) and child protection (CP) prevention and response activities include case management and emergency cash aid. We raise awareness about GBV and CP through community sensitisation activities, and provide safety referrals and family support activities in partnership with women-led organisations. Our activities ensure safe access to our services for survivors and create a more secure environment for conflict-affected communities.

We conduct protection mainstreaming and GBV/CP risk mitigation efforts in close coordination with the Yemen Protection Cluster. Our Safeguarding Implementation Guide and Safeguarding Policy Implementation Toolkit support efforts to create and maintain safe environments in the communities where we operate.

Capacity Building

Regular training on health, nutrition, WASH, food security and protection issues is a central component of our programming in Yemen. Training ensures the delivery of quality services in line with recognised standards and protocols while improving knowledge and skills, helping to sustain the beneficial effects of interventions.

We train health and nutrition cadres on integrated management of childhood illnesses, expanded immunisation programmes, reproductive health, emergency obstetrics and newborn care, mental health, mass casualty, IPC measures, community-based management of acute malnutrition and IYCF in emergencies.

We also train water management committees on operational maintenance and protection of water sources. We have established a network of more than 300 community health volunteers who play a critical role in spreading health education, nutrition and hygiene messaging throughout communities.