Nurses

The release of Ibrahim al-Demestani, a nurse imprisoned by Bahraini authorities, is the latest chapter in the government’s ongoing campaign against health professionals. While his release should be celebrated, al-Demestani should never have been imprisoned and forced to complete a three-year sentence in the first place. As protests against repressive governments swept across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, people living in Bahrain launched peaceful protests. The response was unequivocal: the authorities launched a forceful, bloody crackdown against the largely peaceful protesters. A key element of this crackdown was the targeting of health professionals.

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.

The Philippines began to evacuate 13,000 citizens from Libya as violence continued to rage, AFP reported. The move came after a kidnapped Filipino worker was beheaded and a nurse gang-raped. Libya has warned of a “total collapse” of its health care system, as the security chaos threatens to send into flight many of the foreign workers on whom its hospitals depend.

Mary Robinson, the first female President of Ireland, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and newly appointed UN Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa, has received the 2013 International Council of Nurses’ (ICN) Health and Human Rights Award. Formally presented at the ICN 25th Quadrennial Congress in Melbourne, Australia, the award bestows the esteem and recognition of the world’s 12 million nurses for Robinson’s outstanding contributions to the domain of health and human rights.