Health Workers

She had lost too much blood. Four bullets had ripped through her. A surgery was under way and they could not use anaesthesia. Salma Jaffar, the sole survivor of an attack on a polio immunisation team in Qayyumabad, vividly remembers the searing pain as the doctors cut and sewed her up. For 22 days she stayed in the intensive care unit wondering who would pay her medical expenses. The health department owes her two months’ salary and the meagre stipend for vaccination, Rs250 a day, has also not been paid since August.

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.

Flashback to February 2011. Arab Spring. In Sana’a, Yemen, protesters peacefully assemble in a makeshift tent city, calling for an end to 33 years of the president’s autocratic rule. They are male and female, young and old, urban and rural. Their numbers grow to tens of thousands. On March 18 of that year, the protesters proclaim the day to be Friday of Dignity (Karama in Arabic). Tensions are high. Over the past few days, armed men said to be loyal to the president have built walls to contain the protesters in what had been dubbed “Change Square.” On the Friday of Dignity, as the protesters finish a prayer, masked gunmen set fire to the main wall and begin shooting into the trapped crowd.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The patients in the four hospitals run by Doctors Without Borders in Afghanistan are the lucky ones, by all accounts, having arrived at well-stocked facilities that maintain international standards with scrupulously free care. But when the French medical aid organization, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, surveyed 800 of those patients last year, the results depicted a dismaying picture of unmet health care needs.

In the Ukrainian capital, triage centers have sprung up around Independence Square, where dozens of people have died in the fighting. This video of three minutes and eleven seconds comes from The New York Times' website. See the related article, Converts Join with Militants in Kiev Clash.