Provision of Integrated Nutrition Maternal New-born and Reproductive Health Services for Crisis Affected Population in Yemen Before the crisis, Yemen had the highest malnutrition rate in the middle eastern region with 46.8 percent of under-fives stunted and 39.9 percent underweight according to a 2013 WHO database on child growth and malnutrition. Humanitarian partners now estimate 14.1 million people in Yemen are food insecure and 7 million are severely so as a result of the crisis. At the same time the health system has been drastically impacted with only about 45 percent functional according to preliminary results of a recent HeRAM. Only 37 percent of health facilities are providing Maternal and Newborn health services. Pregnant lactating women and children are particularly vulnerable in these circumstances.

This project aims to provide maternal and newborn nutrition services in integration with the Minimum Initial Services Package for reproductive health in order to prevent avoidable mortality and morbidity. The project primarily targets pregnant women and their newborns particularly malnourished pregnant women, lactating mothers and underweight newborns in districts that are most affected by the crisis in the four governorates of Taizz, Hudaydah, Saadah, and Sana’a that have been assessed to be of high priority by both the health and nutrition cluster.

The planned interventions are part of the minimum Essential Service Package being defined by MOPHP and partners to be delivered for the most vulnerable populations. Prenatal, delivery and postnatal service delivery points will be used to provide nutritional counseling, conducting screening for malnutrition, and for providing micronutrient supplementation to prevent nutritional deficiency conditions such as anemia. 

Mobile medical teams will be strengthened to be able to provide reproductive, maternal and newborn health care services alongside maternal nutrition services at the community level. They will be deployed to serve communities with no access to functional health facilities or to augment services in partially functioning facilities. At the same time health facilities will be supported to be able to provide the range of emergency obstetric and newborn care services needed for treating complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Reproductive Health kits containing equipment and supplies that are needed to provide basic and comprehensive emergency obstetric care services including caesarean section that have been procured under separate funding will be distributed to the health facilities. The supplies will alleviate the current critical shortage of medical supplies being experienced around the country. 

The community component will be executed by community midwives who will be provided refresher courses to enable them provide nutrition counseling and advice for pregnant and lactating mothers as they provide antenatal, delivery, and postnatal care to their clients at the community level. The community midwives will be supported through their umbrella national association to identify and refer cases of malnutrition to nutrition therapeutic centers. They will be supplied with the necessary equipment and supplies.