Attacks

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.

A spokesman for the government in Guinea said on Thursday that eight bodies were found two days after a group of health workers and journalists went missing in the country. The journalists and officials came under attack near the southern city of Nzerekore, close to the Liberian border. One journalist was able to escape and later told reporters that she could hear villagers looking for her. The Associated Press said that the group "was doing disinfection and education on prevention methods" when it went missing.

Emergency room nurse Nora Hellman is a frontline health worker who has responded following natural disasters and during armed conflicts around the world to provide lifesaving medical care. With a background in wilderness medicine, Nora has deployed to extremely difficult working conditions with International Medical Corps but is quick to point out the courageousness and hard work of the local staff she worked alongside throughout numerous disasters.

Last month, Dr. Saeed al-Samahiji, a Bahraini ophthalmologist, was arrested from his home to begin serving a one-year prison sentence after being convicted of “insulting the King of Bahrain” at a funeral last year. Dr. Al-Samahiji was among 20 medics in Bahrain that were convicted by a special military court on 29 September 29, 2011, for treating Bahraini citizens who had been attacked by security forces in the brutal government crackdown in response to peaceful protests in February of that year.

Weeks of intense fighting has left medical services and facilities in the Gaza Strip “on the verge of collapse,” according to senior United Nations officials in the region who today warned that a health disaster of widespread proportions is rapidly unfolding as the conflict grinds on. “We are now looking at a health and humanitarian disaster”, warned James W. Rawley, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in the occupied Palestinian territory, adding: “The fighting must stop immediately.”