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Since January 2014, 140 security incidents have directly harmed NGOs. ACBAR calls upon all parties to the Afghan conflict to end all forms of violence against humanitarian actors—including NGOs and their employees. ACBAR—the Agency Coordinating Body of Afghan Relief & Development—has been aggrieved to hear of the intrusion into a health facility providing essential assistance to patients.

28-year-old Su-Su loves her job helping injured children and adults walk again. She works in the Hpa-An Orthopaedic Centre in southern Myanmar, where she makes and custom fits artificial limbs for victims of landmines, traffic accidents and other injuries. Her specialist training was entirely funded by the ICRC, making her one of only 10 fully trained prosthetic technicians in the whole of Myanmar.

Armed separatists in Ukraine are disrupting health-care services and threatening health professionals, forcing some medical staff to leave their jobs. Human rights organisations have called on both sides in the Ukrainian conflict to respect the neutrality of medical workers amid reports of medical staff being threatened as they do their work, medical equipment being stolen, and the treatment of civilian patients being compromised.

Since last December, health services in the country have been overstretched. "The lack of security has caused many health workers to flee. There have also been reports of health workers being attacked or killed," said Kerry Page, an ICRC health programme coordinator in South Sudan. "In addition, several care facilities have been damaged or looted, and since it's extremely difficult to bring in medical supplies to the places that need them most, the basic health needs of many people simply cannot be met."

Malakal is a ghost town. Once South Sudan's second-biggest city with a population of 150,000, it is now home to more soldiers than civilians. Residential areas have suffered an extraordinary amount of damage since civil war broke out in December 2013, and the teaching hospital, which occupies a once-idyllic compound near a stone mosque built by Egypt in the 1940s, has been laid waste on multiple occasions. The trail of corpses now being discovered on the premises points to a disturbing trend in the country's eight-month-old rebellion: the systematic targeting of hospitals and medical personnel.