Doctors

Suspected armed Islamic militants Wednesday ambushed a convoy carrying doctors near the Somalian capital, killing six people, three of them Syrian doctors in the country giving medical assistance, officials said Wednesday. Capt. Mohamed Hussein, a senior Somalian police commander, said the convoy came under attack in a semi-forested area outside Mogadishu, while on the way to give medical help to patients at a hospital.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today reaffirmed its call to the Bahraini government to immediately release medical professionals who have been wrongfully imprisoned and stop the ongoing targeting of the medical community. PHR, which has documented the Bahraini government’s attacks on doctors and illegal use of tear gas, also stressed the need to stop shipments of tear gas to the kingdom in order to prevent more abuses against the Bahraini people.

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.

In Syria today, there are many storms and relatively few moments of calm. I was enjoying a rare moment of peace, a time to exhale. It was a hot, balmy late afternoon on 26 August and I was sitting on the hospital balcony overlooking the olive groves. The sun was tipping into descent promising respite from its heat. Away from my comfort zone as an emergency medicine doctor in London, I was working in a northern Syrian hospital under the umbrella Hand in Hand for Syria – an aid group – and being followed by a BBC Panorama team, that was looking into the impact of the war on children.

The International Committee of the Red Cross presents this event, which includes a briefing by Pierre Gentile, Head of Unit for Protection of Civilian Populations, on ICRC’s Health Care in Danger initiative. Increasing attacks on health care workers have impacted millions of people worldwide.