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Tag: healthcare

  • New Popular Front gains support from French health activists

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    Original article by Peoples Health Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under a CC licence.

    French health activists stage a protest.

    Social movements and trade unions in France are rallying behind the New Popular Front, which promises a genuine alternative to the far-right and liberal health policies

    Trade unions and activists warn that a National Rally victory would spell disaster for public healthcare in France. If the far-right wins the upcoming election, as polls currently predict, changes would come at the expense of sexual and reproductive health services and migrant health, among other things.

    Marine Le Pen’s party recently dominated the European Parliament elections, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call for a snap election, hoping to mobilize voters against the far-right. According to analysts, Macron gambled that the people of France would go to great lengths to keep the National Rally out of power, perhaps even reaffirming his mandate.

    However, Macron’s policies, including privatization and commodification of health services, have fueled the far-right’s growth. His administration has caused closures of local hospitals, creating health deserts, and continues to push for more privatization, causing patient suffering. Despite the failures of this approach, liberals continue to pursue the same strategy in the current campaign, advocating for a more profit-driven logic in healthcare. The Trade Union of Health Centers’ Physicians (USMCS) stated: “We are experiencing the consequences of this policy on a daily basis. Patients suffer. We want no more of it.”

    The far-right is expected to continue liberalizing the sector while introducing intolerance and xenophobia by prioritizing French citizens and marginalizing other residents. “If implemented, the [far-right policies] will pose a major risk to public health, not only for these ‘excluded’ individuals but also for the population as a whole,” USMCS warned.

    “Abandoning the values of solidarity and universalism that underpin our healthcare system, a right-wing program will worsen social and territorial inequalities. We reject any program that proposes a healthcare policy based on exclusion and discrimination.”

    Trade unions and organizations, united under the Tour de France pour la Santé, are backing the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing coalition opposing Macron’s policies as much as the far-right. The NFP plans to retract the controversial pension reform, curb living costs, and rebuild the healthcare system by recruiting healthcare workers, increasing incomes, and regulating the private sector. For example, the program states that new private clinics will only be allowed if they provide guarantees that patients will not face any out-of-pocket costs.

    Read more: Left and progressives form New Popular Front to counter far-right in French elections

    The USMCS emphasized that the NFP’s program is the only one to offer real prospects for healthcare reform. To support this, the Tour de France pour la Santé announced a series of actions during the election campaign, starting with an assembly in Lille on June 27, where activists will discuss the importance of resisting the far-right. Speakers will include Françoise Nay from the People’s Health Movement (PHM) France and Ramon Vila from the trade union SUD Santé Sociaux.

    “Confronted with the threat of the extreme right, now more than ever, we urge citizens, trade unions, associations, mutual insurance societies, and progressive parties to unite in defending the right to health for all,” the platform said in its press release.

    Ahead of the first round of the election on June 30, the National Rally leads with approximately 35% in polls, followed by the NFP at more than 29%, and Macron’s party at 19.5%. Bridging the gap between the far-right and the progressives might be possible with strong social movement support.

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

    Original article by Peoples Health Dispatch republished from peoples dispatch under a CC licence.

  • ‘Horrific Massacre’: IDF Kills 200+ Palestinians Rescuing 4 Hostages

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

    A man holds a Palestinian, injured during Israeli attacks on refugee camps, as patients and bodies are brought to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on June 8, 2024.  (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “It’s a nightmare at Al-Aqsa,” said Samuel Johann, MSF coordinator in Gaza. “How many more men, women, and children have to be killed before world leaders decide to put an end to this massacre?”

    Palestinian officials said at least 210 people were killed and more than 400 injured as the Israel Defense Forces conducted an operation in the central Gaza Strip on Saturday to rescue four of over 240 hostages taken by Hamas militants last year.

    Israeli forces rescued Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv—all attendees or security guards at a music festival that Palestinian militants attacked on October 7—from two locations in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp, according to the IDF. There are 116 hostages still being held in the Hamas-governed enclave, and at least 41 are believed to be dead.

    Abu Obaida, a spokesperson for Hamas’ military wing, said Saturday that “the enemy succeeded in releasing some of its hostages by committing horrific massacres, but at the same time, killed some of them during the operation.”

    CNNreported that spokespeople for Israel’s police and military said an Israeli policeman from a counterterrorism unit was killed and estimated casualties from the operation at “under 100.” The outlet also noted the higher death toll cited by Gaza officials and spoke with witnesses—including Abu Abdallah, who said that “dogs were eating people’s remains. We pulled out six martyrs, all torn-up children and women, we risked our lives to get them to the hospital.”

    As The Associated Pressdetailed:

    The bodies of 109 Palestinians including 23 children and 11 women were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where spokesperson Khalil Degran told The Associated Press more than 100 wounded also arrived. He said that overall, 210 dead had been taken there and to Al-Awda Hospital, saying he had spoken to the director there. Al-Awda’s numbers couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

    AP reporters saw dozens of bodies brought from the Nuseirat and Deir al-Balah areas, as smoke rose in the distance and armored vehicles rolled by.

    A baby was among the dead. Small children wailed, covered in blood. Bodies were placed on the ground outside, their feet bare, as more wounded were rushed in.

    “It’s a nightmare at Al-Aqsa,” said Samuel Johann, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) coordinator in Gaza, in a statement. “There have been back-to-back mass casualties as densely populated areas are bombed. It’s way beyond what anyone could deal with in a functional hospital, let alone with the scarce resources we have here.”

    In addition to killing more than 36,800 Palestinians and wounding over 83,600—according to Gaza officials—the IDF’s eight-month retaliation for the October 7 attack has devastated civilian infrastructure across the besieged coastal enclave, including hospitals.

    “How many more men, women, and children have to be killed before world leaders decide to put an end to this massacre?” Johann asked amid cease-fire and hostage negotiations mediated by Egypt, Qatar, and the United States—which has provided weapons and diplomatic support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war, despite nationwide protests, including on Saturday.

    Karin Huster, an MSF medical referent, shared an audio recording about her experience at Al-Aqsa’s emergency department Saturday afternoon: “Total chaos inside; the entire emergency room… was completely packed with patients on the floor coming from the bombings in Nuseirat. There were hundreds of patients, and we did whatever we could to stabilize them… And, thank God we were able to refer a bunch of patients to Nasser Hospital as well as IMC Field Hospital that is not far away from here.”

    “Despite the fact that the place was completely overwhelmed, it did an amazing job,” Huster continued. “There is nothing, nothing at all that justifies what I saw today. Nothing. These children—the 3-month-old, the 7-year-old, the 12-year-old that died—the 25-year-old man, the 78-year-old woman, who all have horrendous injuries. Why did they deserve this? And why is the world looking on in silence? …To what level of horror do we need to go before we finally do something, before we finally tell Israel that this is not acceptable?”

    Chris Hook, MSF medical referent at Nasser Hospital, shared an audio update from there, saying that “we’ve received, coming close now to about 50 badly injured patients. There’s people with multiple major open fractures of their limbs. We’ve got several unconscious children who are trying to be escorted through CT scan and on to intensive care.”

    “A few very bad burns have come through, and already four or five people who’ve required chest tube insertion, and things like this, for major injuries to the chest,” he said, explaining that the hospital has a limited ability to perform CT scans, a shortage of pain killers, and a full intensive care unit. “More patients are arriving. It’s a serious mass casualty incident that is occurring right now.”

    Council on American–Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad said in a statement Saturday that “we strongly condemn the Israeli government’s horrific massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp, where Israeli forces, some hidden in a humanitarian aid truck, reportedly slaughtered at least 200 Palestinian civilians while freeing four Israeli hostages who could have and should have been safely released months ago as part of a cease-fire agreement that Benjamin Netanyahu keeps torpedoing so that he can continue the genocide and stay in office.”

    “The Biden administration must be transparent about any U.S. involvement in this massacre and whether any Americans were in the units that carried it out,” Awad added. “The administration also must stop funding these daily incidents of mass slaughter and instead use American leverage to stop the genocide, free all hostages and political prisoners, and end the illegal occupation of Palestine that lies at the root of the violence.”

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

  • Led by US, Global Military Spending Surged to Record $2.4 Trillion Last Year

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

    A row of tanks is pictured in southern Israel on March 14, 2024.  (Photo: Amir Levy/Getty Images

    “Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can’t get enough food?” asked the watchdog group Public Citizen.

    New research published Monday shows that global military spending increased in 2023 for the ninth consecutive year, surging to $2.4 trillion as Russia’s assault on Ukraine and Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip helped push war-related outlays to an all-time high.

    The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recorded military spending increases in every geographical region it examined last year, from Europe to Oceania to the Middle East. Last year’s global increase of 6.8% was the largest since 2009, SIPRI said.

    The United States was by far the largest military spender at $916 billion in 2023, up 2.3% compared to the previous year. The next biggest spender was China, which poured an estimated $296 billion into its military last year—three times less than the U.S.

    “Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can’t get enough food?” asked the watchdog group Public Citizen in response to SIPRI’s report, which found that the U.S. accounted for 37% of the world’s total military spending last year.

    A separate analysis of U.S. military spending in 2023 found that 62% of the country’s federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs, leaving less than half of the budget for healthcare, housing, nutrition assistance, education, and other domestic priorities.

    Together, SIPRI found, the top five biggest military spenders last year—the U.S., China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabia—accounted for 61% of global military outlays.

    “The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security,” Nan Tian, senior researcher with SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, said in a statement. “States are prioritizing military strength but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape.”

    In the Middle East, military spending jumped by 9% last year—the highest annual growth rate in the past decade. Israel, which relies heavily on weapons imports from the U.S., spent 24% more on its military last year than in 2022, according to SIPRI, an increase fueled by the country’s devastating assault on Gaza.

    SIPRI found that NATO’s 31 member countries dumped a combined $1.3 trillion into military expenditures in 2023, accounting for 55% of the global total.

    U.S. military spending, which is poised to continue surging in the coming years, made up 68% of NATO’s 2023 total.

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

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  • 44% of all Palestinians killed by Israel since October 7 are children

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

    Rallies for Palestinian Children’s Day were held across Brazil, including in São Paulo. Photo: Priscila Ramos

    Over 14,000 children have been killed and nearly 17,000 others have lost at least one or both of their parents in the Israeli bombings or ground offensives in the last six months in Gaza

    Israel has killed 14,350 Palestinian children between October 7 and April 4. This means children account for 44% of all Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said in a press release ahead of Palestinian Children’s Day.

    Women and children constitute nearly 70% of over 7,000 additional persons missing in the same period, and the majority of the over 75,000 wounded Palestinians are women and children.

    Out of a total of 455 Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank by the Israeli forces in the same period, 117 were children.

    Over 17,000 Palestinian children have also been orphaned as a result of Israel’s genocidal attacks, according to UNICEF data, after either both or one of their parents were killed in the Israeli bombings and ground offensives since October 7.

    The ongoing genocide in Gaza has also has separated at least 17,000 Palestinian children from their parents.

    Palestinians celebrate Children’s Day on April 5 every year. Human rights groups such as Defense of Children International Palestine, Palestinian Network for Children’s Rights (PNCR) and others mark the day as International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian Children in order to highlight Israel’s systematic crimes against them.

    Israel starves Palestinian children to death

    At least 31 Palestinian children have been starved to death in Gaza in the last couple of months. The starvation is a product of the deliberate blockade and restrictions imposed by the Israeli forces on the delivery and distribution of food and other humanitarian aid in the besieged territory. The entire population of Gaza is now facing acute levels of food insecurity. 

    The around 20,000 children born since October 7 in Gaza are now at severe risk of malnutrition. The prolonged lack of nutrition has raised the possibility of stunted growth for the children of Gaza.

    A large number of pregnant women in Gaza are deprived of adequate medical care as well, due to the genocide and Israel’s repeated attacks on the health facilities and workers.

    According to the PCBS, by the middle of this year, there would be around 2.4 million children below the age of 18 in the occupied Palestinian territories, 43% of the total Palestinian population in West Bank and Gaza. The population of children in Palestine is almost equally divided between the West Bank (over 1.3 million) and Gaza (over 1 million).

    Around 816,000 children in Gaza need psychological assistance due to trauma caused by the ongoing genocide. Around 620,000 have been out of school, with eight out of ten schools destroyed by the invading Israeli forces in indiscriminate bombings on civilian infrastructures and deliberate acts of sabotage. Another 133 schools are used as temporary shelters for displaced people.

    The child prisoners of Palestine

    Though since October 7, Israeli forces detained over 500 Palestinian children, some were released later. However, still there are over 200 Palestinian children in different Israeli jails. According to Addameer, 41 Palestinian child prisoners are being kept under administrative detainees.

    Palestinians children detained by the Israeli forces have often been subjected to torture and abuse both during their arrests and in the prison. In a large number of cases, Palestinian children have been treated like criminals when arrested by Israeli forces with their hands tied, blindfolded. They are often tried in military courts.

    In a report submitted last year by Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, claimed that over “10,000 Palestinian children have experienced institutionalized ill treatment during arrests, prosecutions, sentencing and consequent traumas on themselves and their families.”

    Some children released from Israeli prison recently have also testified that they were isolated in the prison and tortured and severely beaten, Addameer claimed.

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

  • Israeli Assault Turned Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital Into ‘Mass Graveyard’

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

    Palestinians walk among the damaged buildings near the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Gaza on April 1, 2024.
     (Photo: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    “This is part of the genocidal machine,” said one surgeon who volunteered at the hospital. “The genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.”

    The Israeli military withdrew from Gaza’s largest medical facility on Monday after a deadly two-week assault that left the only partially functioning hospital complex in famine-stricken northern Gaza in total ruins.

    Israel’s military, which a United Nations expert has accused of waging an “unrelenting war” on Gaza’s healthcare system, claimed in a statement that it killed 200 “terrorists” inside and around the facility and arrested more than 500 people “associated with terrorist organizations” during its prolonged raid on al-Shifa.

    The military did not provide evidence that those killed were militants; Israel has repeatedly been accused of labeling unarmed civilians “terrorists.”

    According to eyewitness accounts of the raid, Israeli soldiers abused and executed civilians inside the al-Shifa complex, including more than a dozen children. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said last week that its field team “received identical testimonies about the killings and executions of Palestinian children between the ages of four and 16” in and around the hospital.

    Photographs taken in the aftermath of Israel’s assault show al-Shifa buildings scorched, riddled with bullet holes, and reduced to rubble. The hospital’s emergency, surgical, and obstetrics wards were reportedly devastated by Israeli forces, and an unknown number of bodies are believed to be trapped under building ruins.

    World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday that Israel’s siege of the hospital killed at least 21 patients and left dozens of critically ill or wounded Gazans without “necessary means of care—no diapers, urine bags, water to clean wounds.”

    Hossam Shabat, a Palestinian journalist reporting from northern Gaza, said he witnessed “hundreds of bodies” outside of the hospital when he visited the compound on Monday.

    “The bodies were in horrific conditions; many had their hands and legs tied behind their backs and were flattened by a bulldozer,” Shabat wrote on social media. “Many of the bodies were burned and left to be crushed to pieces. Several bodies were decomposed and partly eaten by stray dogs. Most of the bodies were unrecognizable; families could only identify them by their clothes.”

    “Al-Shifa Hospital was considered the largest medical complex in the Gaza Strip, catering to many complex cases,” Shabat added. “It has been completely destroyed; they burned it down and destroyed all medical equipment. Israeli occupation forces [have] one goal and it’s to destroy every inch of Gaza.”

    Ghassan Abu Sitta, a surgeon who volunteered at al-Shifa, told Democracy Now! in an interview on Monday that prior to Israel’s assault on the hospital, al-Shifa “was 30% of the capacity of the health system in Gaza.” Israel raided the facility for the first time in November, and its latest attack began on March 18.

    “The destruction of Shifa, the wanton destruction of Shifa, is a critical component of Israel’s plan to genocidally make sure that Gaza becomes an uninhabitable place, even after a cease-fire happens,” said Abu Sitta. “By destroying Shifa and making sure it is irreparable, the Israelis are trying to make sure that for years to come, Gaza does not have a functioning health system.”

    Abu Sitta went on to criticize Western journalists for helping Israel perpetuate the narrative that al-Shifa was used by Hamas as a “command center” and thus an “acceptable” target.

    “This is part of the genocidal machine,” said Abu Sitta. “The genocide can only take place if the health system is destroyed.”

    Reuters described al-Shifa in the aftermath of the Israeli military’s two-week raid as a “wasteland of destroyed buildings” with “Palestinian bodies scattered in the dirt.”

    Ismail al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s media office, said in a statement Monday that Israeli forces “destroyed and burnt all buildings inside al-Shifa medical complex.”

    “They bulldozed the courtyards, burying dozens of bodies of martyrs in the rubble, turning the place into a mass graveyard,” said al-Thawabta. “This is a crime against humanity.”

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

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