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
01/24/2013
LONDON (AlertNet) - More than half Syria's 88 hospitals have been damaged in the country's bitter civil war, and nearly one third are out of service, making it difficult for people to get medical care, Syrian and U.N. health officials have reported. December data from Syria's health ministry, released by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, shows that 48 hospitals have been damaged, of which 27 are no longer operating. Syria's 1,919 public health centres have been less severely affected - around 10 percent are damaged and 6 percent closed.
01/17/2013
Twelve of the women who were forced out of their hospital beds when radical Islamists seized the city of Gao in northern Mali have finally been found and treated, thanks to the reinstatement of the Fistula Care Project in Mali. After a long search, the project and its local partner GREFFA located many of the missing women—some of whom had been without care for almost nine months. Project staff then transported them and ten other obstetric fistula patients to Mopti, a city southwest of Gao, where a surgical team provided the treatment, care, and referrals the women so urgently needed.
01/16/2013
Côte d'Ivoire: three Ivorian singers – Kajeem, Onakamy and Mawa Traoré – supported by the ICRC, have launched a video clip for the song “C'est une question de vie et de mort.” The video is part of the Health Care in Danger campaign, and is a call for action to all those who can facilitate – or prevent – the vital work of first aiders and medical personnel in situations of violence and other emergencies.
01/08/2013
Dear President Obama, In the first years of the Peace Corps, its director, Sargent Shriver, discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was infiltrating his efforts and programs for covert purposes. Mr. Shriver forcefully expressed the unacceptability of this to the President. His action, and the repeated vigilance and actions of future directors, has preserved the Peace Corps as a vehicle of service for our country’s most idealistic citizens. It also protects our Peace Corps volunteers from unwarranted suspicion, and provides opportunities for the Peace Corps to operate in areas of great need that otherwise would be closed off to them.
12/21/2012
The cold-blooded and premeditated murder of 8 public health workers in Pakistan this week once again brings attention to an issue that is not being adequately addressed: the protection of health care practitioners and allied workers, of health systems’ infrastructure and services, and of health service beneficiaries. Attacks on health care workers, health facilities/services and beneficiaries violate international humanitarian and human rights law. The consequences of such attacks extend beyond the immediate victims: the beneficiaries of the health services, primarily children and their mothers, suffer the effects of the preventable illnesses that occur as a result of the interruption in much-needed health services.