New York Times

Doctors as Targets

Thursday, November 13, 2014
To the Editor: “Doing Good in Harm’s Way” (Giving section, Nov. 7) points out that though medical and relief workers should be protected, in fact they often become targets. I have had the opportunity to meet many doctors working in Syria, who tell me that they are targeted because they are medical professionals. Doctors, nurses and other health workers are often perceived to be the enemy because they treat people on all sides of the conflict. Since the start of the Syrian war, we have documented the deaths of 578 medical personnel and 207 attacks on medical facilities, with government forces overwhelmingly responsible for these crimes.

In Syria, Doctors Become the Victims

Wednesday, November 19, 2014
“Working in a field hospital is like death,” a surgeon told us two weeks ago in Turkey, where more than two dozen Syrian doctors and other health workers had come for training. As if treating victims of the Syrian Army’s weapon of choice, the barrel bomb, wasn’t enough, they themselves were often victims of those same terrible devices.

How Doctors See the Syrian Civil War

Tuesday, August 26, 2014
As if you didn’t already think Doctors Without Borders had its hands full with the Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa, the organization recently released a series of videos and photographs covering the group’s work in and around Syria. The series, “The Reach of War: A Day in the Life of the Syrian Conflict,” offers a glimpse into the activities that the organization conducts on a daily basis to aid refugees and the war-wounded in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Fear of Ebola Breeds a Terror of Physicians

Sunday, July 27, 2014
Health workers here say they are now battling two enemies: the unprecedented Ebola epidemic, which has killed more than 660 people in four countries since it was first detected in March, and fear, which has produced growing hostility toward outside help. Workers and officials, blamed by panicked populations for spreading the virus, have been threatened with knives, stones and machetes, their vehicles sometimes surrounded by hostile mobs. Log barriers across narrow dirt roads block medical teams from reaching villages where the virus is suspected.

Assad Engineers His Re-election

Wednesday, June 4, 2014
The three-year-old civil war continues to rage, with its mounting toll of more than 160,000 people killed and millions displaced in Syria and neighboring countries. Undeterred by any sense of moral compass, Mr. Assad is flattening cities, blocking food aid from rebel-held areas and, according to Physicians for Human Rights, systematically attacking doctors and health care facilities, an especially heinous action that violates the norms of war and can constitute a crime against humanity under international law.

Aid Group in Afghanistan Says Many Still Lack Access to Health Care

Tuesday, February 25, 2014
KABUL, Afghanistan — The patients in the four hospitals run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan are the lucky ones, by all accounts, having arrived at well-stocked facilities that maintain international standards with scrupulously free care. But when the French medical aid organization, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, surveyed 800 of those patients last year, the results depicted a dismaying picture of unmet health care needs.

Kiev: Triage in Crisis

Thursday, February 20, 2014
In the Ukrainian capital, triage centers have sprung up around Independence Square, where dozens of people have died in the fighting. This video of three minutes and eleven seconds comes from The New York Times' website. See the related article, Converts Join with Militants in Kiev Clash.

In Syria, Doctors Risk Life and Juggle Ethics

Monday, October 21, 2013
Months before a chemical weapons attack killed hundreds of Syrians and prompted threats of an American military strike, an anesthesiologist named Majid heard an explosion near his home in a Damascus suburb. He rushed to the makeshift hospital where he works and found patients with itching skin, burning eyes and shortness of breath.

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