Health Workers

Since last December, health services in the country have been overstretched. "The lack of security has caused many health workers to flee. There have also been reports of health workers being attacked or killed," said Kerry Page, an ICRC health programme coordinator in South Sudan. "In addition, several care facilities have been damaged or looted, and since it's extremely difficult to bring in medical supplies to the places that need them most, the basic health needs of many people simply cannot be met."

Malakal is a ghost town. Once South Sudan's second-biggest city with a population of 150,000, it is now home to more soldiers than civilians. Residential areas have suffered an extraordinary amount of damage since civil war broke out in December 2013, and the teaching hospital, which occupies a once-idyllic compound near a stone mosque built by Egypt in the 1940s, has been laid waste on multiple occasions. The trail of corpses now being discovered on the premises points to a disturbing trend in the country's eight-month-old rebellion: the systematic targeting of hospitals and medical personnel.

Tens of thousands of volunteers fanned out across Afghanistan this week, braving deteriorating security and distrusting parents to administer two chilled drops of the oral polio vaccine each to millions of children. Keeping the highly infectious polio disease in check in any country is a daunting task. But in a nation where Taliban militants are fast gaining ground against government forces, it's also a dangerous one.

In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, some 15 hospitals have been damaged in the fighting and so far 20 health facilities have closed. Up to 70 per cent of health care workers have fled while the crisis prevents patients from accessing much needed health care. It is estimated that 5,000 people in that region have been wounded.

An angry mob attacked the quarantine centre in Monrovia's densely populated West Point township on Saturday evening. Rebecca Wesseh, who witnessed the attack, told the AFP news agency: "They broke down the door and looted the place. The patients have all gone. "The attackers, mostly young men armed with clubs, shouted insults about President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and yelled "there's no Ebola", she said, adding that nurses had also fled the centre.