Here in Yemen children are dying of preventable diseases because of the war. A simple cough or winter fever can kill you when your stomach is empty, roads are pulverized by bombardments and hospitals are unreachable both financially and logistically.
I am a Yemeni citizen living in our capital, Sana’a. Our city has faced – along with Saada on the border with Saudi Arabia – most of the aerial attacks of the Saudi-led campaign.
I am a volunteer with Your Ability Organization, one of many local NGOs founded and based in the capital.
The siege of Yemen has taken our country back of hundreds of years. Most of the country is out of work and there are shortages of electricity, gas, food and water. For almost 600 days children have gone to bed, every single night, fearing the sound of airplanes.
Cholera is spreading here and the threat of famine is looming over millions. We are seeing scenes that remind us of Biafra, Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s. We look back to the Yemen we used to know and so little stands. Memories clash with the reality.
Emotionally it’s a never ending pain with an entire generation of children scarred for life. This legacy of post traumatic stress disorder will have to be addressed if we want to turn Yemen, one day, into a nation which is somehow healing.
Earlier this year I met Mohamed Ahmed, father of two children, both of whom have a serious and painful form of cancer of the tongue. He was looking for help and was only able to reach the capital Sana’a because friends in his village collected donations to fund his journey.
His six-year-old daughter Gaza had cancer of the tongue and despite visiting many hospitals he has not found an effective treatment for her. The only solution is an urgent surgical intervention, possibly with tongue transplant, but due to the war the doctors can’t currently give her this treatment.
I worked with Dr Karim of Mona Relief Organisation and tried to find a way to get Gaza out of Yemen. Her passport, document, everything was ready. But not Sana’a airport: it was closed due to the Saudis’ blockade on Yemen. No flights allowed out of Yemen.
Gaza remained bedridden and suffered severe pain until death took her from her parents. Her parents pain did not end: it continues through their second child Mohamed, two years old, who has the same cancer and needs the same treatment.
Another man comes to see us with a desperate story. Jamal Abdullah is displaced from Taiz, a city which is suffering from fighting between different groups of militants. He tells us he has come to Sana’a to try and get treatment for his daughter Al-anood who has cancer of the blood. She is due to have treatment at the Al-Kuite hospital. He and his other children are going without food to buy her medicines.
It is a hard task to be a parent in Yemen: you know you are going to lose your child, either because of illness or under the bombs.
Parents are picking up the body parts of their children after airstrikes. Homes, schools, hospitals, nowhere is safe. Bombs are dropped everywhere.
Our NGO receives limited support both locally and internationally. The country remains closed, abandoned to its destiny.
The author is a human rights activist in Yemen and is on twitter @Living_Yemen. He works with Your Ability Organisation, @YourAbility_org
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.