The death of a Yemeni child from diphtheria due to a delay in receiving a regular vaccine has sparked widespread anger among Yemenis on social media, fueled by a photo of her and an emotional post of her father.
Diphtheria is a serious bacterial infection, usually affecting the nasal mucosa and throat, and is especially fatal among children, and is transmitted through contact with an infected person.
Symptoms begin within two to five days of catching the infection, including a thick, gray membrane covering the throat and tonsils, sore throat and hoarseness, swollen glands and difficulty breathing.
If not treated, it can cause heart damage, as well as nerve damage due to toxins spread by bacteria, but all this can be avoided by receiving the vaccine for children, which is among the usual vaccines.
Rahaf al-Batool, a 14-year-old Yemeni girl, was suffering from this disease, and her father, Hamoud al-Batoul, did not find treatment in the hospitals of Ibb governorate where he lives, so he went to Sana'a to seek treatment to save his daughter.
Social media users circulated a picture posted by the girl's father of his daughter prostrating herself in the hospital room praying to God to facilitate her access to medicine, writing: "She did not know about the state's inability to provide a vaccine dose, nor did she know that the Ministry of Health is manipulating the lives of innocent people."
The father continued: "The warehouse employee says the serum is there and the director says non-existent and the minister says after a week, while it is disbursed to the rich," concluding his publication with her obituary and attributed her death for not getting a vaccine dose, and said, "When God meets opponents, I bid you farewell to God, and my heart is burned with the fire of separation. I bid you farewell to God and my tears did not stop crying, your departure broke my back."
Widespread anger
Rahaf's picture and her father's post sparked widespread anger among Yemenis, as Shabakat program monitored in its episode on (2023/9/17) part of it, including what Nashwan Al-Hajj wrote: "Rahaf Al-Batool is a story of inexhaustible pain. Pain repeats, every child has a story with pain."
Salam tweeted: "Imagine yourself watching your 12-year-old girl struggle with death and you have no trick or means to save her other than praying. Pure and innocent souls have no place in this selfish and inhumane world."
As for Mahfouz Ali, he said: "You can imagine the extent of negligence and indifference in Yemeni hospitals in general, where is the care and medical care?! The diphtheria dose is not available and already exists, but it is only dispensed to sheikhs and leaders."
While Hamdan al-Jaadi expressed his affection for the image of the girl and wrote: "Rahaf hours before her death, prays with the intention of a speedy recovery from the disease that exhausted her body, but God willing, he took her good soul to him and she died."
In response to a request by the Shabakat program to comment on the girl's father's accusations, Anis al-Asbahi, spokesman for the Ansar Allah Houthi Health Ministry, said, "There are no problems with vaccines and they are available at the ministry."
Diphtheria infections have become very rare in developed countries thanks to the spread of vaccines, but the rate of infections is higher in developing countries, including Yemen, where the World Health Organization says the disease is spreading alarmingly, and that in 2018 more than 470 cases were recorded, while the number of deaths reached about 46 people in the same year.
In 2017, MSF provided a medical shipment of 17 tonnes of medicines to Sana'a, including <>,<> vials (small vials) of antivenoms to combat the spread of diphtheria.