Spoiled Medicines Kill Yemen’s Children: This Is How the Houthis Finance Their Wars and Accumulate Wealth

a year ago

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During the years of the Yemeni war, the Houthi militia turned the areas under its control into a testing ground for smuggled and expired medicines with the aim of profiting and increasing the treasury in the capital Sana'a.

As it was not enough for the Houthis to recruit healthy children and engage them in their absurd wars, they went beyond that by exposing dozens of patients to spoiled medicines introduced through the militia's smuggling networks.

The suffering of thousands of residents in Houthi-controlled areas is escalating due to the almost complete lack of medical services, the outbreak of many diseases and epidemics, and the outage of more than half of the health facilities in Yemen.

In the meantime, a number of families in Yemen were devastated at the beginning of October 2022, with the death of their children suffering from leukemia, over separate days, after receiving doses of a contaminated drug at the end of September in Sana'a that were smuggled into the country.

 

Source of Wealth

After its coup against the state at the end of 2014, the Houthi militia began harassing private companies and established black markets in various sectors, including the oil and pharmaceutical sectors, for the purpose of profit and doubling their resources.

Since his appointment to the position of Minister of Health in the Houthi government on May 12, 2018, the Houthi leader, Taha al-Mutawakel, has embarked on implementing the militia's plan to complete the bulldozing of the health sector and control the pharmaceutical market in Sana'a and the rest of the areas under the Houthis control.

The scheme was implemented by imposing royalties on drug companies and local drug manufacturers in favor of the war effort and obligating them to provide free treatment to militia wounded.

The Houthis, through the Ministry of Health, are seeking to control the funds of international organizations and the shipments of medicines and aid that flow to them, as well as the market and trade in medicines.

Health workers confirmed, on August 18, 2021, that Houthi militias imposed illegal levies on the private health sector.

This negatively affected citizens by raising the prices of services provided to patients, according to the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

Sources in the militia-run Supreme Authority for Medicines revealed that the head of the authority, Muhammad al-Madani, had opened the door for Houthi leaders to establish private companies to import medicines. In addition to allowing the import of pharmaceutical items that do not conform to standards and specifications, in return for receiving huge bribes amounting to $20,000 to register a single drug item and allow its import, according to what was reported by the Mareb Press website on May 21, 2018.

As for the Houthi leader, Daghsan Ahmed Daghsan—wanted number 22 on the list of the Saudi–Emirati coalition and the famous dealer of pesticides and weapons—he established a new company to import medicines, facilitated by the head of the Medicines Authority, Muhammad al-Madani.

According to the World Health Organization, 35,000 cancer patients in Yemen face the risk of death due to the lack of funding and the lack of medicines.

 

Lethal Injection

There is conflicting information about the real number of victims of spoiled medicine in Sana'a. The Ministry of Health, run by the Houthi militia, said on October 13, 2022, that 10 children died out of 19 children with leukemia, ranging in age from 3 to 15 years, due to complications from receiving a drug that was administered to the public.

It attributed the reasons to the delay in entering these medicines from the ports under the control of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen and accused it of preventing the entry of vital medicines for leukemia diseases.

However, Yemeni medical sources reported the death of 18 children on separate days after they were provided with expired medicine at the end of September 2022 in the Cancer Treatment Unit at Kuwait Hospital, while the rest of the children were transferred to intensive care departments in Sana'a hospitals.

The Yemeni government blamed the Houthi militia for the death of more than 18 children with cancer in Sana'a after they were given contaminated medicine and called on the World Health Organization to open an urgent investigation into the incident and to prosecute those involved and hold them accountable.

 

Smuggling Networks

Commenting on this tragedy, the Director General of Medical and Treatment Services at the Yemeni Ministry of Health, Abdul Raqib Mahrez, said, "The tragic incident that occurred in Sana'a must not go unnoticed, and a high-level investigation must be opened by international humanitarian and human rights organizations, and those responsible for the death and smuggling of children must be held accountable."

 In an interview with Al-Estiklal, he said, "The Ministry of Public Health and Population of the legitimate government is following with great interest and great concern the fate of children who are still in a deteriorating health situation."

He stressed that the ministry's call "for the honorable and qualified medical professionals in Sana'a to pay attention and care for children, supervise and follow up on their health status and work to reduce the complications of medicines."

The Yemeni official expressed the condolences of the Ministry of Health of the legitimate government to the families of the child victims.

He also called on all international organizations to pressure the Houthi militia to "allow the entry of vaccines and medicines related to children and immunization campaigns to protect children and women from deadly diseases."

The Yemeni medical official pointed out that "all medicines that enter the country are supervised by the Supreme Authority for Medicines, and samples are examined before permission to use, and this procedure is carried out at all ports, airports, and land and sea ports."

Mehrez explained that "there are medicines that enter through smuggling, and the role of the Supreme Medicines Authority remains in controlling and supervising pharmacies to confiscate any smuggled, expired or poorly stored medicines and hold those responsible for them accountable according to the law."

This will limit the phenomenon of smuggling, counterfeiting and selling damaged and expired medicines, he said.

He concluded by saying, "However, in Houthi-controlled areas, damaged and expired medicines are smuggled and sold without oversight from their authority, which does not care about the lives of children and society in general."

During the war years, the drug smuggling market flourished in Yemen, and the country was flooded with many items that were not subject to any control, and many Yemenis died annually because of corrupt smuggled medicines.