Saudi aid organization and UN health agency reach an agreement to reduce Yemeni female fatalities

In order to reduce the number of fatalities among girls and pregnant women in Yemen, the King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Center has intensified its collaboration with a UN health organization.

On Tuesday, representatives from KSrelief and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) signed a contract to offer reproductive health care to women in the war-torn nation.

The center stated in a tweet: "The project plans encompass lowering lives lost among girls and pregnant women in Yemen by offering free but also high-quality medical services, including establishing reproductive health medical centers, refitting the centers with the required medical devices & supplies, giving out free medicine to recipients, & establishing 50 medical teams to work in distant and rugged regions to record the cases and connect them to the centers."

According to the KSrelief statement, the project was anticipated to, directly and indirectly, impact about 350,000 individuals. Since the start of 2020, the UNFPA has been running the service with financing from the Saudi assistance organization, supporting maternity and health clinics to help offer safe delivery circumstances.

In order to support combined efforts with the UNFPA in delivering emergency services for gender-based violence in Yemen, KSrelief announced in October 2020 that it would contribute $1.6 million.

"We applaud KSrelief for this contribution, which will assist UNFPA to provide crucial gender-based violence services to women and girls in Yemen," said Luay Shabaneh, the UN agency's regional director at the time for Arab states.

In Yemen, there are persistent gender disparities, according to the UNFPA. Females were especially at risk of gender-based violence due to the breakdown of protective systems, which left them more susceptible to abuse. Three-quarters of those displaced by war were women and children.

Since 2015, the center and UNFPA have collaborated in Yemen to provide information and services about reproductive health and protection to hundreds of thousands of women and girls.

The UNFPA stated in 2017 that its collaboration with KSrelief "has improved the protection services offered to the most vulnerable women and girls in Yemen."

"Since the beginning of 2021, KSrelief has generously financed protection services targeted at eliminating gender-based violence, helping over 65,000 women and girls in Yemen," it stated.