Letter to UNICEF following their shipment of aid to Aden on May 23, 2015

Sent: May 23, 2015

UNICEF Yemen team,

We have been in contact with the Dr. Abdulnasser Alwali (+967733791544), who is the Chairman of the Higher Medical Public Committee in Aden (HMPCA), which currently has oversight on a number of critical health facilities in the southern and eastern Governorates: Aden, Abyan, Lahj, Al Dhale’e, Shabwah, Hadramaut and Al Maharah. He has been informing us that humanitarian actors have not been coordinating with them to ensure that critical gaps in response and unmet needs are identified.

That being said, they continue to report a severe shortage in essential medicine and supplies in a number of overwhelmed facilities. And I have attached their needs assessment report, which details what is urgently needed for you to review(see PDF files #1, 2, and 3).

And we have just noted on your Twitter page (@UNICEFYemen) that medical supplies have just arrived in Aden. Therefore, please circulate this information to your partners and representative who are on the ground. And we hope that they will collaborate with HMPCA in order to ensure that the aid will be effectively and timely delivered to all active health facilities there.

Lastly, on May 11th, with the help of Physicians Across Continents (PAC), HMPCA was able to safely transfer 27 critically wounded patients across sea to Djibouti. However, there still remains approximately 366 patients with severe injuries that still need to be evacuated (see PDF file #4). Though we are not sure if this information is relevant to your department, we figured that we should also inform you of this as well.

There is a Facebook Page for HMPCA where you can find health related updates from them, as well as, information about the authority itself: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Higher-Medical-Public-Committee-in-Yemen-Aden/1557089484577922

Thank you for supporting the Yemeni people.

Yours Respectfully,

_____________________________

Omran Alsalahi

M.D. candidate at Eastern Virginia Medical School

M.S. in Biomedical Sciences

Graduate Certificate in Global Medicine