Health Care

SITTWE, Myanmar — When the kicking stopped, Zura Begum suspected something was wrong with the twins she was supposed to deliver that month. When the pain started shooting through her body, all doubt was erased. She needed help, but had nowhere to turn. She was trapped with thousands of other Muslim Rohingya in a squalid, dusty camp in western Myanmar’s Rakhine state. The foreign aid workers she had relied on early in her pregnancy were gone — forced out by a distrustful government and extremist Buddhist mobs. Getting help outside the camps, in hospitals run by the Buddhist Rakhine majority, requires special permission that is harder than ever to obtain.

I would like to reflect that Afghanistan is facing an armed conflict, and that the security situation has been gradually degrading over the past few years. In 2013 NGOs were impacted by 228 violent incidents, the highest number since 2011 and the worst year on record. During the four first months of 2014, 43 security incidents impacted NGOs in Afghanistan.

A female polio worker was gunned down by two armed men on a motorcycle in the cantonment area of Bannu on Monday. The shooting occurred at around 8:30 in the morning, according to Deputy Superintendent of Police Sanaullah Khan Marwat. Marwat identified the victim as Fehmida Yasmeen, wife of Sattar Shah, a resident of Sokari Zabita Khan. Yasmeen was shot dead while she was going to a market near Abi Talha Masjid in Bannu cantonment.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) submitted an amicus brief today in support of members of the Turkish Medical Association (TMA) who will face trial for recruiting and organizing urgent medical care for protesters injured during the Gezi Park demonstrations that began in May 2013. The Turkish Ministry of Health brought a court suit against the governing and disciplinary boards of the TMA’s Ankara Chamber of Medicine on January 27, 2014, requesting their removal from office for providing care to protesters injured during the demonstrations.

In Colombia, health-care providers have their own distinctive and protective emblem called the “misión médica”, a term that encompasses medical services as a whole. In August 2002, the promotion and use of this emblem to identify medical personnel, facilities and vehicles became a national priority when the Ministry of Health and Social Protection issued a decree stipulating that medical services must be protected.