The closure of Sana’a International Airport has caused the death of more than 95,000 patients who were in urgent need for treatment abroad, Undersecretary of the General Authority for Civil Aviation and Meteorology, Raed Taleb, said on Tuesday.
This came during a press conference held by the Sana’a-based Ministry of Transport and the General Authority for Civil Aviation and Meteorology at the Sana’a Airport dock, coinciding with its closure for the fifth year in a row by the Saudi-led coalition.
Taleb affirmed that more than 480,000 patients urgently need to travel for treatment abroad in a way that cannot be postponed, more than 30 of them die every day.
He indicated that more than 71,000 patients with cancerous tumors are threatened with certain death, and more than 8,000 patients with kidney failure need kidney transplants and urgently need to travel abroad.
“More than a million patients are at risk of death as a result of the lack of many chronic diseases medicines, which were transported through Sanaa International Airport under special transport conditions,” he explained.
The closure of Sana’a International Airport has prevented four million Yemeni expatriates from returning home while thousands of students lost their scholarships, he added.
For his part, Director of Sana’a International Airport, Khaled Al-Shayef, explained that the continued closure of Sana’a Airport to civilian flights for more than five years has exacerbated the humanitarian situation and caused the greatest human tragedy in contemporary history.
“There are international demands to open Sana’a airport as a result of the catastrophic humanitarian repercussions of its continued closure, and the coalition countries are still insisting on linking this to other files, including military and political ones,” Al-Shayef said.
In the conference, the Ministry of Transport and the General Authority for Civil Aviation and Meteorology held the coalition countries legally responsible for all the catastrophic consequences of the continued closure of Sana’a Airport.
