Health Workers

ACBAR wishes officially to express its disapproval of any attack, intimidation, violence or threats against NGOs working in Afghanistan. We appeal to all parties to the Afghan conflict to respect the neutrality of NGOs and the work they do with the aim of helping people of Afghanistan without implication of the ongoing conflict. NGOs – both local and international – play a critical role in providing relief and development aid to needy people in all 34 provinces of Afghanistan; often in areas were other services providers have limited or no access.

The severe lack of medical supplies in Syria has been well documented by both the media and humanitarian and human rights groups. Humanitarian missions are blocked, supply trucks are targeted for attack, and those attempting to move critical medical supplies into Syria put their lives at risk. There are insufficient supplies of nearly everything needed by doctors and their patients – everything except laughter.

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.

World Health & Population is seeking submissions of original manuscripts for a theme issue on the nature and impacts of attacks on health workers in conflict zones, to be published in Fall 2014. The issue’s guest editors are Leonard S. Rubenstein and Katherine Footer of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Joseph Amon of Human Rights Watch.

Mohammed is one of 15,000 Syrian doctors who was forced out of his country, unable to continue treating the wounded in a bloody conflict that forced the United Nations to stop counting the dead. In late 2012, he was working as a field doctor in rural Damascus when he became the target of a brutal crackdown on those providing medical assistance to the injured in opposition-held areas.