Health

Reports were received of damage to Al Wafa Rehabilitation Hospital in Sejaiya. According to media reports rockets were stored in a building near the hospital, which was bombed later. Inside the hospital at the time were 17 patients in serious condition (for whom evacuation presents a real danger to their condition), staff and international activists.

Suspected al-Qaeda gunmen opened fire on a minibus carrying staff members from a military hospital in Yemen's Aden on Sunday (June 15th), killing at least six people, AFP reported. The attackers used an assault rifle to rake an army minibus, carrying doctors and nurses working for the military hospital in Aden, with gunfire.

Midwives can sometimes be the only thing standing between life and death for women and children in a humanitarian crisis situation. Watch how one midwife in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan is saving the lives of women and children.

At the 67th World Health Assembly in Geneva last week, Chantal Baumgarten of Save the Children delivered a statement on behalf of her organization as well 21 other organizations who are affiliated with the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. The statement was made in respond to agenda item 17M: “WHO’s response, and role as the health cluster lead, in meeting the growing demands of health in humanitarian emergencies (resolution WHA 65.20).”

Experts are calling for increased protection to healthcare workers and patients in crisis situations in the face of growing attacks on health facilities, which challenge notions of their neutrality. “We need multiple and reinforcing means to protect health care in situations of violence, including the well-developed mechanisms of human rights monitoring, reporting and accountability,” Leonard Rubenstein, chair of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a group of humanitarian and human rights organizations, told IRIN from the World Health Assembly, which is being held from 19 to 24 May in Geneva.