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In its latest attempt to harass medical professionals and the injured demonstrators they treat, the government of Turkey is considering a health bill that would criminalize certain aspects of emergency medical care and force doctors to compromise their professional duty to treat those in need. The bill would criminalize independent medical care by qualified practitioners throughout Turkey and provide the Ministry of Health with unprecedented control over health care practices.

Practicing medicine in China has become an even more high-risk business. In ten days in October, China reported at least six attacks on healthcare workers. In the most recent case, a man, unhappy with the results of an operation, fatally stabbed a doctor and wounded two others in a hospital of Zhejiang province.

A new report, entitled “Ambulance and pre-hospital services in risk situations,” sets out ways to make pre-hospital care and ambulance services operating in areas of armed violence safer. The report was unveiled today at the International Red Cross and Red Crescent statutory meetings in Sydney, Australia.

More than 85 percent of health workers in Turkey are subjected to violence at least once during their professional life, according to a recent survey conducted among the health workers by the health union, Sağlık-Sen. Health workers who have been exposed to violence at least once during their professional life made up 86.8 percent, with 81.4 percent of respondents saying they were exposed to violence last year, according to a Sağlık-Sen survey conducted among 1,300 health workers in 15 difference provinces across Turkey via face to face interviews.

A bomb exploded Monday near a group of polio vaccinators in Peshawar, killing at least two policemen, The New York Times reported. Since December, at least 20 polio workers have been killed in similar assaults. Such violence has threatened the global effort to stamp out the disease in the three countries where the virus is still endemic — Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.