Health Care

The World Medical Association and the Standing Committee of European Doctors warned governments around the world against trying to dismantle medical professional self-governing bodies. The warning follows the dismissal of the case brought by the Turkish Government to dismiss the governing bodies of the Ankara Chamber of Medicine.

Four members of a polio immunization team have been found murdered after being kidnapped in southwest Pakistan, officials said Wednesday. Local militants had abducted the vaccination worker, two local tribal policemen and a driver in the Zhob district of Baluchistan province on Saturday. Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio remains endemic. But attempts to eradicate it have been badly hit by opposition from militants and attacks on immunization teams that have now claimed 71 lives since December 2012.

In January, IntraHealth International submitted a statement on behalf of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition to the World Health Organization’s Executive Board Meeting in Geneva. Submitted as part of agenda item 8.2, poliomyelitis, the full text of the statement is below and also published by the WHO along with other statements by NGOs that are in official relations with the WHO. IntraHealth is a steering committee member of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition.

International humanitarian group Médecins Sans Frontières has currently suspended its medical activities in the Nuba Mountains in Sudan after a hospital it runs was bombed this week. An MSF staff member and a patient suffered injuries from the attack on the hospital in Frandala village in South Kordofan, where government troops and rebel forces are fighting. MSF Head of Mission Marc Van der Mullen believes the hospital was deliberately targeted by the Sudanese Air Force to “terrorize the community.” The government, he argued, is fully aware of the hospital’s location and activities.

So far this year, MSF has treated 213 children for complicated measles at its hospital in Sadda, which specializes in children’s healthcare. “What is upsetting is that so many of the conditions we see here are preventable,” says Dr. Rahman Sakhi, one of the senior doctors at MSF who sees dozens of such cases every month. “The community is suffering unnecessarily because of the militarization in the area.” More than 175 health facilities and 500 schools have been targeted and destroyed by militants across FATA since 9/11, according to Nizam Khan Dawar, a human rights specialist and CEO of the Tribal Development Network. “Even in war zones, hospitals and schools should be neutral places and shouldn’t be attacked,” he says.