Meet the heroes powering our emergency response
Episode 5
Dr Ahmed Al Soofi
Head of WHO suboffice in Al Hudaydah, YemenMy journey with WHO began in 2007, following years of service with Yemen’s health ministry and a Belgian nongovernmental organization dedicated to assisting people with disabilities.
Al-Hudaydah, nestled by the Red Sea, presents unique challenges. It has experienced years of conflict and continues to suffer consistent instability. This has escalated in the past few months, as the impact of the war in the occupied Palestinian territory has spilled over into Yemen. In fact, only the other day, when I was leaving the office, there was an airstrike close by, about 500 metres away.
But it has not been easy here for years. One of the most challenging times for Hudaydah was in the second half of 2018. I remember travelling from Hudaydah to Aden, where my family lives, to spend the last few days of Ramadan with them, when I had to return to work immediately after arriving home.
Just as I’d reached Aden, I had received an urgent call from the WHO Representative to Yemen, who was in Geneva at the time. He told me the situation in Hudaydah was rapidly worsening and that it had become the main area of the conflict in Yemen. I