Arab News, Wednesday, Jun 22, 2022 | Zul Qaadah 22, 1443
Saudi aid center, UN health agency sign deal to cut female deaths in Yemen
Saudi Arabia: The King Salman
Humanitarian Aid and Relief Center has bolstered its work with a UN health
agency to help cut the number of deaths among girls and pregnant women in Yemen.
Officials from KSrelief and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) on Tuesday signed an
agreement to provide reproductive health services for women in the war-torn
country.
In a tweet, the center said: “The project goals include reducing deaths among
girls and pregnant women in Yemen by providing free and high-quality medical
services such as establishing reproductive health medical centers, equipping the
centers with the necessary medical devices and supplies, providing free
medicines to beneficiaries, and forming 50 medical teams to work in remote and
rugged areas to record the cases and link them to the centers.”
The initiative was expected to benefit around 350,000 people directly and
indirectly, the KSrelief statement added.
The UNFPA, with the Saudi aid agency’s support, has been operating the service
since the beginning of 2020, funding maternity and health centers to help
provide safe childbirth environments.
In October 2020, the KSrelief announced a contribution of $1.6 million to
support joint work with the UNFPA in providing emergency gender-based violence
services in Yemen.
At the time, Luay Shabaneh, then the UN agency’s regional director for Arab
states, said: “We thank the KSrelief for this contribution, which will help
UNFPA to provide essential gender-based violence services to women and girls in
Yemen.”
According to the UNFPA, women and girls face entrenched gender inequalities in
Yemen. Three-quarters of those displaced due to war were women and children, and
females were most at risk of gender-based violence as the breakdown of
protection systems made them vulnerable to abuse.
Since 2015, the partnership between the center and the UNFPA in Yemen has helped
reach hundreds of thousands of women and girls with reproductive health and
protection information and services.
Last year, the UNFPA said: “The partnership with the KSrelief has contributed to
the improvement of the protection services provided to the most vulnerable women
and girls in Yemen.
“KSrelief has generously supported the protection services aimed at reducing
gender-based violence, benefitting more than 65,000 women and girls in Yemen
since the beginning of 2021,” it added.