During the last few months in Yemen, I requested the WHO Yemen Country Office communication team to produce a 8’ video and a short photo book with the title “FACES: The Forgotten War in Yemen’.

They can be both downloaded in their full version from this domain.

These two WHO products had the same intent: to try to illustrate as the direct impact of the war in terms of casualties, and social infrastructures’ destruction are just the tip of the iceberg of the overall suffering of the Yemen population. Even this direct impact is only partially documented. For example the almost 10,000 deaths and 60,000 injuries reported by the hospitals during the 4 years of war are just a fraction of the overall casualties’ count.

The rampant acute malnutrition among children and pregnant and lactating women, the devastating cholera epidemic, the psychosocial distress, the lack of access to life saving care for patients with acute as well chronic conditions are just some other factors that have contributed already to a tremendous increase of mortality and morbidity, as well deterioration of health functioning and quality of life across almost the whole country, impossible to document in details at the moment.

The multifaceted aspects of suffering of Yemen people during these 4 uninterrupted years of war is the main message we tried to convene with these two pieces of work.

We all know there is no military solution to this conflict, much more need to be done to promote peace at all levels, inside and outside Yemen, in order to make progress on a political solution.  An important step can be to document and inform the general public on Yemen. This domain, with its content, is just a small contribution from my part, hoping I will be able to do more along these lines in future.

Special thanks to all the colleagues and Yemenis people I had the privilege to work with and serve during my work in Yemen.