health

The siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital: When Israel made a hospital, its staff, and patients, military targets

Spread the love

Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Scenes from Israel’s siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital. On the left, the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya as he walks towards Israeli tanks. On the right, IOF forced health workers and patients to strip and evacuate the hospital. Photo: Screenshots

As part of its ethnic cleansing policies, Israel continues to systematically target medical facilities and health workers across the Gaza strip.

The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) set Kamal Adwan Hospital on fire on Friday, December 27, putting the largest medical facility in the northern part of the besieged enclave out of service. Kamal Adwan is located in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip and was one of the last functioning hospitals in the area.

According to the Director of Gaza’s Health Ministry, Munir al-Bursh, the IOF ordered 350 people including 75 patients and their escorts along with 185 medical staff to evacuate the hospital, and move to a nearby school sheltering displaced people.

Gaza’s Health Ministry stated that it has completely lost contact with medics inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital since the IOF stormed the facility.

The whereabouts of the hospital director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, are currently unknown. Dr. Safiya had been providing constant updates on Israel’s siege of the hospital for the last several months and pleading for international institutions to take action to stop Israel’s attacks. On December 2, 2024, he penned a column in the New York Times titled, “I’m One of the Last Doctors in This Hospital in Gaza. I’m Begging the World for Help.” In the essay, he wrote, “We feel as if the rest of the world is wrapped up in a different world from the one we are in. We are suffering and paying the price of the genocide that is happening to our people here in the northern Gaza Strip.”

Notably, in its report on Israel’s final siege on the hospital, the Times depicts the travesty at Kamal Adwan as collateral damage in Israel’s “offensive against Hamas militants” uncritically repeating Israel’s allegation that “the hospital was a stronghold for Hamas and that it was carrying out ‘targeted operations’ in the area.”

In a statement published on Friday, the World Health Organization (WHO) slammed Israel’s arson attack on the hospital, which used to serve over 400,000 Palestinian citizens. “This morning’s raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service. Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” the statement reads.

“60 health workers and 25 patients in critical condition, including those on ventilators, reportedly remain in the hospital. The patients in moderate to severe condition were forced to evacuate to the destroyed and non-functional Indonesian Hospital. WHO is deeply concerned for their safety,” the statement continues.

The WHO clarified that the raid on Kamal Adwan Hospital followed Israel’s escalating restrictions on the organization and its partners to access the hospital. The raid also came after repeated attacks on the hospital and its vicinity since early October. The organization considered the assault on the hospital as part of the systematic dismantling of the health system in Gaza, labeling it as a “death sentence for tens of thousands of Palestinians in need of health care.”

For its part, the Palestinian Presidency slammed the attack considering it as “part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide and displacement against the Palestinian people”, and a “serious and blatant violation of international law and international agreements and conventions that protect medical facilities and personnel during armed conflicts.”

The Palestinian Presidency urged global health organizations, including WHO, Doctors Without Borders (MSF), and other international humanitarian bodies “to fulfill their responsibilities toward stopping this crime against the Palestinian healthcare sector.”

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) condemned the attack calling it a “war crime” committed amid “international inaction and full complicity from the US administration.”

In an Al Jazeera interview on Friday, Hamas official Osama Hamdan refuted Israeli claims that there were Palestinian fighters in the hospital and stated that Kamal Adwan Hospital has been subjected to a massacre for 75 days. Hamdan added that the attack on the hospital is part of an attempt by Israel “to end all manifestations of civilian steadfastness in northern Gaza.”

One day prior to setting the facility to fire, Israeli fighter jets launched an airstrike on a building opposite of Kamal Adwan Hospital. At least 50 people were killed in the attack, including three health workers. Earlier in the month, IOF placed booby trapped devices around the hospital, and eyewitnesses said they saw explosive robots and hidden bombs deployed around the facility.

Kamal Adwan was not the only major medical facility to be targeted by IOF in Gaza during the past two weeks. Israel also intensified its attacks on the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahiya, and the Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia refugee camp north of Gaza city, which has prompted doctors and authorities in Gaza to request immediate intervention by the international community.

Yet, despite the numerous cries for help and warnings of dangerous escalation by Gaza’s health workers, Israel has been able to proceed with the destruction of healthcare and its genocide of the Palestinian people thanks to the full backing it enjoys by the United States government.

Original article by Aseel Saleh republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
UK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE

Continue ReadingThe siege of Kamal Adwan Hospital: When Israel made a hospital, its staff, and patients, military targets

Children in Gaza face health crisis and hunger amid continued Israeli attacks

Spread the love

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Photo: AWDA Health & Community Association

Children in Gaza are becoming increasingly hungry and unhealthy as the destruction of healthcare infrastructure exacerbates the spread of infectious diseases

The health of children in Gaza is deteriorating rapidly. Between June and October 2024, Nasser Medical Complex treated 300 children daily for infectious diseases like diarrhea, respiratory issues, and skin infections. These numbers are compounded by Israeli attacks on hospitals, obstruction of humanitarian aid, and the dire living conditions faced by more than one million forcibly displaced Palestinians preparing for winter in makeshift shelters.

The situation is equally critical regarding hunger and related conditions among children. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 33,000 children have been admitted for acute malnutrition. Health workers have also reported a rise in cases of nutritional edema, a condition that causes swelling due to a lack of protein intake. For over a year, children in the Gaza Strip have struggled to access adequate nutrition because of Israel’s blockades.

Child health experts have repeatedly warned about the long-term consequences of hunger for generations growing up in Palestine. Now, they caution that “there are clear signs of a rapidly worsening nutritional situation across Gaza, with two-thirds of the children admitted for outpatient treatment of acute malnutrition since the beginning of 2024 recorded in the past five months alone.”

Read more: UN experts say, there is already famine in Gaza

Many child health services have been damaged or destroyed by Israeli attacks, leaving families reliant on sparse healthcare facilities still providing support. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) recently reported that, as a result, many mothers are forced to undertake dangerous journeys on foot to access healthcare for their infants. These journeys, MSF stated, expose both mothers and children to potential attacks and “put them [ill children] at high risk of health complications.”

“Even after receiving treatment, newborns and children return to unsanitary living conditions, which in turn leads to a deterioration of their health conditions and ability to heal properly,” MSF said. “My son doesn’t laugh, doesn’t play, doesn’t drink milk. He sleeps all the time,” a forcibly displaced mother shared with MSF.

Poor hygiene conditions, resulting from Israeli bombardment of water and sanitation infrastructure, are set to worsen further as the rainy season progresses. Thousands of tents have already been destroyed by heavy rains in recent days. Humanitarian agencies expect that heavy rainfall and rising sea tides will make sewage accumulation worse, fueling the spread of disease.

Read more: Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh’s death by torture underscores brutal targeting of Palestinian health workers by Israel 

Meanwhile, Israeli attacks on healthcare facilities and other civilian infrastructure in Gaza continue. Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is still being targeted, including by quadcopters, resulting in damage to essential medical equipment and critical injuries to more healthcare personnel. Among the injured is the hospital’s director, Hussam Abu Safiya.

Israeli authorities are still trying to justify the attacks by alleging the presence of Palestinian resistance groups in the hospitals they are attacking, despite not providing any proof. However, UN human rights experts emphasize that even if such claims were true, “Israeli forces are still bound by their obligations under international humanitarian law.”

“The manner in which this Israeli operation [the attack on Kamal Adwan] has been conducted is raising concerns about the likelihood that northern Gaza will be emptied of Palestinians through death and displacement,” the UN Human Rights Office in Palestine stated.

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscriptions to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

Original article by Ana Vračar republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

dizzy: Israel’s genocides should be regarded as a joint enterprise involving the United States, United Kingdom and Israel.

Experiencing issues with this image not appearing. I suspect because it's so critical of Zionist Keir Starmer's support of and complicity in Israel's genocides.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpA
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government's support for Israel's Gaza genocide and the UK government and military's active participation in genocide.
Genocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.

Continue ReadingChildren in Gaza face health crisis and hunger amid continued Israeli attacks

NHS buildings ‘falling apart’ as government sidesteps urgent funding issues

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nhs-buildings-falling-apart-government-sidesteps-urgent-funding-issues

A general view of staff on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London

CAMPAIGNERS slammed the government for “not talking seriously” about health service funding today, after it emerged that the bill to fix crumbling NHS buildings has soared while patients and staff are left in harm’s way.

New figures show that the cost to eradicate NHS repairs in England jumped to £13.8 billion in 2023, up by a fifth compared to the previous year.

Costs amounting to £3bn were attributed to “high-risk” repairs, which could cause injury if left unaddressed.

NHS Providers deputy chief executive Saffron Cordery said: “Vital bits of the NHS are literally falling apart after years of underinvestment nationally.

“The safety of patients and staff is at risk.

“The list of essential repairs across the NHS waiting to be done keeps getting longer and the costs are rocketing.”

The spiralling maintenance backlog outstrips the cost of running the NHS estate itself, which also increased by 11 per cent to £13.6bn.

King’s Fund chief executive Sarah Woolnough said the backlog has grown due to the “repeated raiding” of capital budgets to shore up day-to-day running costs, coupled with “short-term sticking plaster solutions.”

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nhs-buildings-falling-apart-government-sidesteps-urgent-funding-issues

Continue ReadingNHS buildings ‘falling apart’ as government sidesteps urgent funding issues

For-Profit US Healthcare System—Once Again—Ranks Dead Last Among Its Peers

Spread the love

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Medical staffers tend to patients at a hospital in Houston, Texas on August 18, 2021. (Photo: Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” said one progressive activist.

A report out Thursday shows that the United States’ for-profit healthcare system still ranks dead last among peer nations on key metrics, including access to care and health outcomes such as life expectancy at birth.

The new analysis from the Commonwealth Fund is the latest indictment of a corporate-dominated system that leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured and unable to afford life-saving medications without rationing doses or going into debt.

“Despite spending a lot on healthcare, the United States is not meeting one of the principal obligations of a nation: to protect the health and welfare of its residents,” the report states. “Most of the countries we compared are providing this protection, even though each can learn a good deal from its peers. The U.S., in failing this ultimate test of a successful nation, remains an outlier.”

People in the U.S., which spends roughly twice as much per capita on healthcare as other rich nations, “live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths,” Commonwealth noted, pointing to frequent “denials of services by insurance companies” and other systematic defects of the American system, including massive administrative costs.

Meanwhile, insurance giants and pharmaceutical companies are raking in huge profits, benefiting in particular from the growing privatization of Medicare. More than half of the Medicare-eligible population in the U.S. is currently on a privately run Medicare Advantage plan.

“Our private, profit-driven system means that we are paying more for less,” progressive activist Jonathan Cohn wrote in response to the Commonwealth report.

Americans live the shortest lives and have the most avoidable deaths.

Note: To normalize performance scores across countries, each score is the calculated standard deviation from a nine-country average that excludes the US. See “How We Conducted This Study” for more detail.

Data: Commonwealth Fund analysis.

Source: David Blumenthal et al., Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System — Comparing Performance in 10 Nations (Commonwealth Fund, Sept. 2024). https://doi.org/10.26099/ta0g-zp66

The Commonwealth Fund’s findings bolster progressives’ case for transitioning to a Medicare for All system that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone in the country for free at the point of service. Studies have repeatedly shown that such a program would cost less than the immensely wasteful for-profit system—which is set to drive national healthcare spending to $7.7 trillion per year by 2032—while saving lives.

Commonwealth observed Thursday that while affordability “is a pervasive problem” in the U.S., Australia “offers free care in all public hospitals, and the nation’s universal Medicare system provides all Australians with coverage for all or part of the cost of [general practitioners] and specialist consultations and diagnostic tests, with additional subsidies available for private hospital care.”

“The U.S. continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector,” the report continues. “While the other nine countries differ in the details of their systems and in their performance on domains, unlike the U.S., they all have found a way to meet their residents’ most basic health care needs, including universal coverage.”

Americans face the most barriers to accessing and affording health care.

Note: To normalize performance scores across countries, each score is the calculated standard deviation from a nine-country average that excludes the US. See “How We Conducted This Study” for more detail.

Data: Commonwealth Fund analysis.

Source: David Blumenthal et al., Mirror, Mirror 2024: A Portrait of the Failing U.S. Health System — Comparing Performance in 10 Nations (Commonwealth Fund, Sept. 2024). https://doi.org/10.26099/ta0g-zp66

With the U.S. presidential election less than two months away, neither 2024 candidate for the two major parties has outlined a detailed healthcare proposal thus far.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, said during last week’s debate in Philadelphia that he merely has “the concepts of a plan,” while Harris—who once co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation in the Senate—said she “absolutely” supports “private healthcare options” and wants to “maintain and grow the Affordable Care Act.”

Just days after the debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)—Trump’s running mate—said the Republican nominee prefers a system in which “a young American” and a “65-year-old American with a chronic condition” are not placed in “the same risk pools,” suggesting a rollback of the ACA’s protections for people with preexisting conditions.

“You can’t really say people with preexisting conditions are protected if they are in a separate insurance risk pool and can be charged exorbitant premiums,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at the research group KFF, wrote in response to Vance’s comments.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingFor-Profit US Healthcare System—Once Again—Ranks Dead Last Among Its Peers

Contaminated blood victims confused and angered over changes to compensation plan

Spread the love

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/contaminated-blood-victims-confused-and-angered-over-changes-to-compensation-plan

Campaigners, including many who are personally infected and affected by infected blood, gather in Westminster, London, July 26, 2024

CONTAMINATED blood victims expressed confusion and anger after the government announced changes to a multibillion-pound compensation plan today.

Paymaster General and Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds said survivors of the biggest treatment disaster in NHS history will get life-long support with up to £15,000 extra for those subjected to “unethical” research.

Payouts under the scheme will start by the end of the year for survivors and by next year for affected people such as family members under a second set of regulations.

Mr Thomas-Symonds said the total estimate of the cost of scandal compensation will be set out in the Budget red book, with more than £1 billion had already been paid out.

“We know no amount of compensation can fully address the damage to people who suffered as a result of this scandal,” he said.

The £15,000 payout was, however, branded as “derisory and insulting” and a “kick in the teeth” by a victim who was infected with HIV and other viruses while subjected to unethical medical testing at a specialist school.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/contaminated-blood-victims-confused-and-angered-over-changes-to-compensation-plan

Continue ReadingContaminated blood victims confused and angered over changes to compensation plan