Beyond Maternity: Quantifying the Holistic Disease Burden and Systemic Neglect of Women’s Health in Yemen

Yemen faces a dual humanitarian catastrophe—a decade-long armed conflict coupled with one of the world’s most severe health crises. While international attention on women’s health remains fixated on maternal mortality, this paper challenges the “reproduction-centered” paradigm and quantifies the broader disease burden affecting Yemeni women aged 15–49. Using secondary analysis of Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 data, health facility assessments, and humanitarian response documentation, we demonstrate that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and mental health conditions represent substantial but systematically neglected drivers of female morbidity and mortality. While maternal conditions remain a top cause of death, cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, and communicable diseases (TB, cholera) collectively account for significantly greater disability-adjusted life years. Healthcare access for these conditions is severely constrained, with only 21% of health facilities offering NCD and mental health services, compared to maternal health services reaching 20% of facilities. Gender-specific barriers—including the mahram requirement limiting women’s mobility, critical shortages of female health providers, and the gender-blind design of humanitarian responses—perpetuate a “blind spot” in women’s health. We conclude that integrating NCD screening into antenatal clinics, training midwives in mental health first aid, and explicitly incorporating women’s holistic health indicators into humanitarian needs assessments and cluster coordination are essential to address this systemic neglect.