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What's New
09/12/2014
On September 8, the United Nations Security Council and Member States convened at an Open Debate on Children and Armed Conflict, to address the devastating impact these violent settings have on the security and healthy development of children. This occasion marked the second open debate on this issue, following the Secretary General’s July 1 Annual Report on Children and Armed Conflict, and sadly comes at a time when children have been forced to bear the brunt of some of the most severe ramifications of war and civil unrest.
09/10/2014
"The Muslim and ethnic Rakhine communities are both suffering the long-term effects of violence. Access to essential health care and clean water has been seriously affected, as has the capacity to earn a livelihood," said Enrique Ochoa, head of the ICRC’s office in Sittwe. Since resuming its programmes in May, the organization has been tackling a broad range of problems faced by both communities.
09/08/2014
A ban on vaccinations by a Taliban leader in retaliation for U.S. drone strikes, and attacks on health-care workers after a fake vaccination campaign was used to hunt down Osama bin Laden, have hurt eradication efforts and enabled polio to spread inside Pakistan.
09/04/2014
Since last December, health services in the country have been overstretched. "The lack of security has caused many health workers to flee. There have also been reports of health workers being attacked or killed," said Kerry Page, an ICRC health programme coordinator in South Sudan. "In addition, several care facilities have been damaged or looted, and since it's extremely difficult to bring in medical supplies to the places that need them most, the basic health needs of many people simply cannot be met."
09/02/2014
The political chaos and unrest in Libya is taking a serious toll on health services, with the departure of medical staff and humanitarian agencies increasing the strain on health workers seeking to treat those injured in the clashes taking place since June. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) situation report, thousands of people have fled their homes in Tripoli and Benghazi and “large hospitals in Tripoli and Benghazi are overwhelmed with patients requiring emergency and trauma care.”
08/30/2014
Armed separatists in Ukraine are disrupting health-care services and threatening health professionals, forcing some medical staff to leave their jobs. Human rights organisations have called on both sides in the Ukrainian conflict to respect the neutrality of medical workers amid reports of medical staff being threatened as they do their work, medical equipment being stolen, and the treatment of civilian patients being compromised.
08/29/2014
Malakal is a ghost town. Once South Sudan's second-biggest city with a population of 150,000, it is now home to more soldiers than civilians. Residential areas have suffered an extraordinary amount of damage since civil war broke out in December 2013, and the teaching hospital, which occupies a once-idyllic compound near a stone mosque built by Egypt in the 1940s, has been laid waste on multiple occasions. The trail of corpses now being discovered on the premises points to a disturbing trend in the country's eight-month-old rebellion: the systematic targeting of hospitals and medical personnel.
08/28/2014
Humanitarian access in Syria has improved since the U.N. Security Council last month authorized the delivery of emergency aid across the Syrian border without the government's consent, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report. But he warned that designated terrorist groups continue to prevent aid workers from accessing some of the estimated 10.8 million people in Syria in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
08/28/2014
The scale of the disaster in Ghouta did not truly sink in until I saw the images streaming in on YouTube and Arabic news channels. These are the images that throttle the soul—children, dead, lying in rows among hundreds, their angelic faces a chilling contrast to the monstrosity that claimed their lives. Nothing in medical school prepares you for this.
08/26/2014
As if you didn’t already think Doctors Without Borders had its hands full with the Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa, the organization recently released a series of videos and photographs covering the group’s work in and around Syria. The series, “The Reach of War: A Day in the Life of the Syrian Conflict,” offers a glimpse into the activities that the organization conducts on a daily basis to aid refugees and the war-wounded in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.