Medical Supplies

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Tuesday called for the urgent removal of obstacles to the delivery to Yemen of vital medical supplies needed to treat casualties from a week of deadly clashes and air strikes. A shipment of ICRC medical supplies sufficient to treat from 700 to 1,000 people was due to arrive by plane on Tuesday for distribution to hospitals across the country that are running low on the means to treat the war wounded. So far, efforts to negotiate the safe arrival of the plane have not been successful.

When the Syrian Revolution began back in 2011, Lubna Shaheen became an activist working with the opposition. As the war wore on, and as more and more Syrians became displaced, Shaheen, who didn’t want to be identified by her real name, felt there was a more urgent need. “I had to stop what I was doing as an activist,” she says, “and help the internal displaced people. They needed help.” But Syria became more dangerous by the day. Some of Shaheen’s friends were arrested, tortured and even killed. Shaheen had her own encounter with authority. She was stopped as she was delivering medical supplies from Damascus to Homs.

Ramallah: Health services in the Gaza Strip are set to collapse in the next few days because the health sector in the region is experiencing a serious shortage of medicines and other medical supplies across all Gaza-based hospitals.