When Adyan was born in a rural hospital in Lahj, southwestern Yemen, he weighed just 900 grams. At only 28 weeks, his chances of survival were slim. In many conflict-affected settings, a baby born that early would not survive. But Adyan did. The midwife caring for him had access to modern equipment, specialized training and evidence-based clinical approaches designed specifically for low-resource settings.
Adyan survived because innovation was able to reach him despite the challenges that he and his family faced. Adyan’s story raises a larger question: Why do we assume that innovation belongs only to the world’s strongest health systems when it is needed most in its weakest ones?
For decades, humanitarian response has focused on delivering assistance after crisis strikes. That work remains essential. But in many cases, today’s crises are no longer short-lived emergencies. Conflicts are lasting longer, weather-related events are becoming more frequent, and weak health systems are struggling under pressures they were never designed to absorb.
According to the United Nations, nearly 239 million people now require humanitarian assistance and protection services worldwide. At the same time, progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals - the global targets adopted by all UN member states to improve health and well-being by 2030 - is slowing, particularly in countries affected by conflict and fragility.
The consequences are particularly visible in maternal and newborn health.
According to the World Health Organization, six out of every 10 maternal deaths worldwide now occur in countries experiencing conflict or institutional fragility. Women living in these settings face dramatically higher risks during pregnancy and childbirth - not because solutions do not exist, but because health systems often lack the capacity, skilled workers and resources to deliver them consistently.
Investing in innovative care is still too often viewed as requiring stable environments, where implementation is less challenging, and outcomes are more predictable. Yet if such investment exists to improve lives, shouldn’t it then flow to where lives are most at risk, not away from them?
Yemen offers a compelling example.
More than a decade of conflict has left 22.3 million Yemenis - nearly half of them are women and girls - in need of humanitarian assistance, and the country’s health system faces extraordinary pressure. Women and newborns face preventable risks every day because services remain difficult to access. More than 1,600 women die each year from pregnancy and childbirth-related complications, while shortages of medicines, functioning health facilities and trained health workers continue to put the mothers and newborns who survive at unnecessary risk.
Against this backdrop, International Medical Corps, working closely with Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population, and with funding from King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre and the Gates Foundation, is testing whether proven innovations in maternal and newborn nutrition and health can be successfully adapted to one of the world’s most challenging operating environments.
The initiative, which spans 29 health facilities across five governorates in southern Yemen, has introduced a package of proven maternal and newborn health innovations. These include improving maternal nutrition, identifying high-risk pregnancies earlier, preventing postpartum hemorrhage, strengthening newborn care and equipping frontline health workers with the training and tools they need to provide high-quality care in remote and under-resourced communities.
By the end of the project, more than 100,000 women and newborns are expected to benefit directly from these interventions, expanding access to potentially lifesaving care in communities where such services are often hardest to access.
But sustainable impact requires more than technology. It requires commitment.
From the beginning, Yemen’s Ministry of Public Health and Population was a full partner in adapting the interventions to national protocols and integrating them into existing services. Its officials did not simply authorize the work; they championed it, attending training sessions and reviews by choice rather than obligation - and that commitment reached every level of the system. This is not about importing solutions from outside. It is about strengthening local systems so that improvements continue long after the projects end.
This distinction matters.
Innovation lasts only when local institutions own it, and it reaches the people who need it most only when someone is willing to apply it where it may be difficult to deliver.
As the international community works toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, one reality is becoming increasingly clear: progress will depend not only on the innovations that we develop, but on when we choose to invest in them.
The future of humanitarian action and global health will not be shaped in the world’s less-challenging environments. It will be shaped in communities where health systems are under the greatest strain - and where the need is most urgent.
Adyan went home because this project reached him. He is proof, not a promise - evidence that, even in the world's hardest places, the right investment saves lives.
The task now is to make his story the rule rather than the exception.
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Dr. Abdullah AlMoallem is the Health and Environmental Aid Department Director at King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre.
Dr. Ons AlKhadra is the Senior Director of MENA & GCC Affairs at International Medical Corps.
