Conflict

Syria’s shattered health system is forcing health workers to engage in brutal medical practices and a series of epidemics have left millions of children exposed to a plethora of deadly diseases, Save the Children says in a new report. The report, ‘A Devastating Toll: the Impact of Three Years of War on the Health of Syria’s Children’, sheds light on a broken health system and its consequences: children not just dying from violent means but from diseases that would previously either have been treatable or prevented.

Flashback to February 2011. Arab Spring. In Sana’a, Yemen, protesters peacefully assemble in a makeshift tent city, calling for an end to 33 years of the president’s autocratic rule. They are male and female, young and old, urban and rural. Their numbers grow to tens of thousands. On March 18 of that year, the protesters proclaim the day to be Friday of Dignity (Karama in Arabic). Tensions are high. Over the past few days, armed men said to be loyal to the president have built walls to contain the protesters in what had been dubbed “Change Square.” On the Friday of Dignity, as the protesters finish a prayer, masked gunmen set fire to the main wall and begin shooting into the trapped crowd.

The paper explores the security incidents affecting medical humanitarian work in Yemen and the ways MSF as well as other health practitioners try to securitize their staff, facilities, patients. This reflection was born out of the high number of security incidents affecting MSF in the past three years, as much as a shared analysis by Yemeni health professionals that doctors in the country are particularly exposed to insecurity and suffer a chronic lack of respect from the patients.

The killing had begun. Bullets were flying, armed rebels were advancing and the terrified hospital staff had fled to the bush. Inside the abandoned hospital, three Canadian doctors refused to leave. Even as the fighting raged toward them, they performed an emergency cesarean section to save a pregnant woman’s life. Then they ran and hid as bullets began thwacking into the hospital in the town of Bor, South Sudan.

On January 21, Yuriy Verbytsky suffered an eye injury during a violent clash with riot police in Kyiv. He went to Oleksandrivska Hospital with his friend, Igor Lutsenko. Minutes after the men were admitted, a clique of men entered their hospital room and beat them before dragging them from the building. Two days later, Verbytsky’s dead body was found, with traces of duct tape over his face.