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Every child has a right to education and health. But when conflict means the end of learning for millions of children; when health services break down or access is denied; when easily treatable diseases become deadly, we must act. “We have seen it, we know what it is, and now we have to stop it, to tell the world who is responsible for these acts and to work together to use the tools we have to prevent and stop these horrible acts which can scar children for a lifetime,” said Special Representative Leila Zerrougui.

Experts are calling for increased protection to healthcare workers and patients in crisis situations in the face of growing attacks on health facilities, which challenge notions of their neutrality. “We need multiple and reinforcing means to protect health care in situations of violence, including the well-developed mechanisms of human rights monitoring, reporting and accountability,” Leonard Rubenstein, chair of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a group of humanitarian and human rights organizations, told IRIN from the World Health Assembly, which is being held from 19 to 24 May in Geneva.

SITTWE, Myanmar — When the kicking stopped, Zura Begum suspected something was wrong with the twins she was supposed to deliver that month. When the pain started shooting through her body, all doubt was erased. She needed help, but had nowhere to turn. She was trapped with thousands of other Muslim Rohingya in a squalid, dusty camp in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The foreign aid workers she had relied on early in her pregnancy were gone — forced out by a distrustful government and extremist Buddhist mobs. Getting help outside the camps, in hospitals run by the Buddhist Rakhine majority, requires special permission that is harder than ever to obtain.

BANNU: Unidentified armed men attempted to kidnap two female polio workers in Howaid area of Bannu on Wednesday before letting them go with a warning. The workers were let go after the mediation of locals but with the warning that they would be killed if seen vaccinating children in the area again. An official of the Howaid police station, Fidaullah Wazir, said Taj Bibi and Gohar Taj complained to the police that they were immunising children in Mamakhel when three armed men approached them.

Two women were killed and 2 children sustained injuries, when unidentified men hurled a hand grenade on a house located in the limits of Suru police station today. According to the police sources, in the limits of Suru police station, few unknown armed men threw a hand grenade on the house of a Polio Supervisor Falak Niyaz, as a result of which two women got killed and two children were seriously injured.