News, blog posts, and event announcements. Other websites are welcome to cross-post this material with attribution and a link to the original.
What's New
10/01/2014
Recruiting health workers with high levels of internal motivation is critical for work in difficult conditions, where their personal security and health might be compromised, according to new research published today in Health Policy and Planning. Health workers often witness the deaths of friends and colleagues during conflict situations and also face abduction, injury and death, themselves. Life history interviews with 26 health workers who lived through conflict in Northern Uganda reveal their resilience and how they coped by building trusting relationships with the community, seeking support from managers and elders, and finding strength from their faith and commitment to serve their community.
10/01/2014
Kurds wounded in the fighting were brought to a makeshift clinic in the town of Salhiyah, where dusty and exhausted, they described savage battles, with militants sniping at them from inside homes and from the windows of a hospital in Rabia.
09/28/2014
A rebel field hospital has been attacked in Yemen, northeast of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa. The attack coincided with a demonstration in the capital against its occupation by Shiite militants. According to Yemeni security, a suicide bomber killed and wounded scores of people when he detonated a car laden with explosives into a hospital run by the Shiite Houthi rebel group around 100 miles northeast of the capital of Sanaa.
09/25/2014
A high-level panel during the United Nations General Assembly concluded States must take concrete action to ensure the protection of health care—particularly in situations of armed conflict and emergencies—and garnered support for an eventual UN resolution on the topic. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, co-chaired the event with Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization.
09/25/2014
Violence against health-care workers and facilities, medical vehicles and patients during armed conflict and other emergencies is one of the most serious challenges of humanitarian concern in the world today. Violent acts, which limit access to health-care services for those most in need and disrupt health-care systems, have severe immediate and long-term consequences. Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), has highlighted the alarming scale of the problem.
09/24/2014
As health workers fan out across the Ebola-stricken areas of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, they are facing a battle on two fronts: fighting Ebola and addressing the fears, rumors, and myths of those at risk of Ebola. Sadly, those fears, rooted in a lack of understanding of a deadly disease never seen before in these countries and a long history of corruption and mistrust of government, has led to health workers being attacked and killed.
09/24/2014
Since January 2014, 140 security incidents have directly harmed NGOs. ACBAR calls upon all parties to the Afghan conflict to end all forms of violence against humanitarian actors—including NGOs and their employees. ACBAR—the Agency Coordinating Body of Afghan Relief & Development—has been aggrieved to hear of the intrusion into a health facility providing essential assistance to patients.
09/24/2014
Representatives from Doctors Without Borders just back from a mission to Iraq, report conditions in that country are grim. They say their medical activities are focused mainly in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq because they have no access to territories seized by the militant group Islamic State.
09/18/2014
A spokesman for the government in Guinea said on Thursday that eight bodies were found two days after a group of health workers and journalists went missing in the country. The journalists and officials came under attack near the southern city of Nzerekore, close to the Liberian border. One journalist was able to escape and later told reporters that she could hear villagers looking for her. The Associated Press said that the group "was doing disinfection and education on prevention methods" when it went missing.
09/15/2014
28-year-old Su-Su loves her job helping injured children and adults walk again. She works in the Hpa-An Orthopaedic Centre in southern Myanmar, where she makes and custom fits artificial limbs for victims of landmines, traffic accidents and other injuries. Her specialist training was entirely funded by the ICRC, making her one of only 10 fully trained prosthetic technicians in the whole of Myanmar.