Many Yemenis seem reluctant to get the jab on religious grounds, distrust or because of the dangers of war.
In al-Thawra hospital in the disputed Yemeni city of Taiz, a nurse with no face mask or protective gear inoculates the few people who have shown interest in the COVID-19 vaccine.She picks an AstraZeneca vial from a cooler box, warms it with her hands and invokes the name of God before injecting the shot into a man’s left arm.
Yemen has received 360,000 doses from the global COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme, yet many Yemenis seem reluctant to get inoculated on religious grounds, due to distrust of the vaccine, or because of the dangers of war.“We have received 70,000 doses in Taiz and we started the vaccination campaign on April 21,” Rajeh al-Maliki, head of Yemen’s health ministry in Taiz.“We can fairly say that there is very little interest … we have distributed around 500 shots since we started, it is less than we expected,” Maliki said.
There has been a dramatic spike in infections in Yemen this year, straining a health system already battered by war, economic collapse and a shortfall in aid funding.
Source: aljazeera.com
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
