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News, blog posts, and event announcements. Other websites are welcome to cross-post this material with attribution and a link to the original.

03/26/2014

The severe lack of medical supplies in Syria has been well documented by both the media and humanitarian and human rights groups. Humanitarian missions are blocked, supply trucks are targeted for attack, and those attempting to move critical medical supplies into Syria put their lives at risk. There are insufficient supplies of nearly everything needed by doctors and their patients – everything except laughter.
03/25/2014

The unusual night-time kidnapping and brutal murder of a female polio vaccinator in the troubled Pakistani city of Peshawar has heightened fears among health workers struggling to stamp out the virus in the face of violent opposition from militant groups. The body of Salma Farooqi, a 30-year-old who had been involved for years in Peshawar’s battle against polio, was recovered from a field 4km (2.5 miles) from her home on Monday, a day after armed men stormed her house, tied up family members and took her away.
03/20/2014

On March 7 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2143 on children and armed conflict. The Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition makes particular note of paragraphs 16, 17, and 19. These contain language calling for children’s continued access to health care, condemning attacks on health facilities and health workers, and affirming children’s right to access services.
03/19/2014

Mohammed is one of 15,000 Syrian doctors who was forced out of his country, unable to continue treating the wounded in a bloody conflict that forced the United Nations to stop counting the dead. In late 2012, he was working as a field doctor in rural Damascus when he became the target of a brutal crackdown on those providing medical assistance to the injured in opposition-held areas.
03/19/2014

In the preparation for the upcoming elections of the spring 2014, the government of Afghanistan published a list of 173 health facilities designated as polling stations. First and foremost ACBAR members acknowledge that the upcoming election process is a civilian political process, thus non-military, and therefore shouldn’t be targeted under International Humanitarian Law.
03/17/2014

She had lost too much blood. Four bullets had ripped through her. A surgery was under way and they could not use anaesthesia. Salma Jaffar, the sole survivor of an attack on a polio immunisation team in Qayyumabad, vividly remembers the searing pain as the doctors cut and sewed her up. For 22 days she stayed in the intensive care unit wondering who would pay her medical expenses. The health department owes her two months’ salary and the meagre stipend for vaccination, Rs250 a day, has also not been paid since August.
03/16/2014

Three years ago today, Bahraini security forces entered Salmaniya Medical Complex - the largest public hospital in Bahrain. In a flagrant violation of the right to health, security forces interfered with medical services and refused entry to the injured and sick. Over the next few months, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) documented the government's systematic attacks on medics, including those who had offered help to peaceful anti-government protestors.
03/11/2014

The Human Rights Council this afternoon held a panel discussion on the importance of the promotion and protection of civil society space. The discussion included a video message from Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations Secretary-General, and a statement from the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.
03/11/2014

Syria’s shattered health system is forcing health workers to engage in brutal medical practices and a series of epidemics have left millions of children exposed to a plethora of deadly diseases, Save the Children says in a new report. The report, ‘A Devastating Toll: the Impact of Three Years of War on the Health of Syria’s Children’, sheds light on a broken health system and its consequences: children not just dying from violent means but from diseases that would previously either have been treatable or prevented.
03/10/2014

SITTWE, BURMA — In western Burma’s Rakhine state, authorities asked international aid group Doctors Without Borders (known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF) to cease operations after accusations of aid bias. Activists say the ban will leave nearly 700,000 people without access to much needed medical care in the country's second-most impoverished region.

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