Latest news with #medicalfacilities
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Telegraph
Inside Gaza's last working hospital lies a shadow of Hamas control
The tracer bullets are unmistakable as they streak across the otherwise dark forecourt of Gaza's Nasser hospital, with the deafening sound of automatic gunfire overhead. Around the corner, several white four-by-four vehicles are in flames, charring the building's walls. Photos later emerged revealing devastation inside one of the Strip's last functioning medical facilities, with the glass screen above the reception desk shattered by bullets. The gunfight is believed to have taken place between Hamas and one of southern Gaza's powerful armed families, the so-called 'clans'. It is believed that the terror group summarily executed a member of the Barbakh clan, whose fighters then chased the Hamas members into the hospital, looking for revenge. One report said six Hamas terrorists were killed in the fight. Tension – and indeed bloodshed – between Hamas and the southern clans has become increasingly common in recent weeks as both scrap for control over meagre aid supplies. However, the fact that the Barbakh gunmen's first instinct was to look for their enemy in the grounds of a working hospital is arguably significant. Evidence has emerged in recent months of Hamas and affiliated groups in the medical facility. Sources inside Gaza have also alleged that the groups use the hospital for torture, filming some of the interrogation videos that they have published in the last month inside the medical complex itself. It comes as the hospital remains a crucial lifeline for Gazans caught in Israeli airstrikes, which the IDF says are targeting Hamas officials. Doctors have described harrowing scenes of wards overwhelmed with patients presenting with trauma injuries. However, with Hamas violence against civilians also evident in the Strip, there is mounting evidence that Hamas, when it chooses, exercises control over treatment decisions in the hospital, effectively deciding who lives and dies. One video seen by The Telegraph shows a public beating, staged by Hamas, of individuals alleged to have stolen food. Amid the screams of pain, a fighter can clearly be seen spray painting – in Hamas green – the Arabic word for thief on one of the tortured men's naked backs. One source said: 'This is to prevent him receiving treatment if he goes to the hospital.' When the group fired on a bus full of Palestinian staff going to work at one of the new US-backed aid centres earlier in June, witnesses who spoke to The Telegraph said the group then prevented doctors at Nasser from treating the survivors. This is believed to have raised the death toll from eight to 12. In another incident in June, the family of a man who had been badly tortured for alleged opposition to Hamas turned up at the Nasser hospital to complain that he was being refused treatment. Hamas arrived and allegedly killed five of them. Numerous Palestinian sources have since told The Telegraph that Hamas uses the hospital as a base where the terrorists hide from the families they attack. One source with first-hand experience of the hospital said: 'They hide among patients, medical staff and hospital facilities without any responsibility for endangering patients and medical staff.' The sources who gave information to The Telegraph did not want to be named for fear of reprisals. Israel has long claimed that the hospital is used as a military command and control centre. However, The Telegraph has not seen evidence to verify this claim. The IDF has launched a number of controversial airstrikes on the hospital with that justification since the start of the war, one of which was caught during a live TV news broadcast. On that occasion in May, a munition was targeted at a precise room in an upper storey of the building. The IDF says their strikes have been precise and aimed at Hamas militants, although NGOs have said innocent civilians were killed. Attacking a hospital can be prosecuted as a war crime, as can using civilians as a human shield, a charge routinely levelled against Hamas. Whatever else is taking place there, the Nasser hospital is currently providing a medical lifeline to the people of southern Gaza. Only last week, the entire facility was described as a 'trauma ward' given the number of casualties coming in from shootings related to the new US-backed aid distribution centres. However, following the battle on June 26, some Gazans have begun to complain openly on social media about Hamas's presence in the hospital. One said the group has taken to sending letters to its opponents, summoning them for questioning at the site. The Telegraph has seen a copy of a document on social media that activists say is one of these summons. It is addressed from the interior ministry in Khan Younis. It instructs the recipient, whose name is blanked out, to 'police investigations department, Nasser'. It also bears the stamp of the Gaza interior ministry. A photo of the document was posted on a free Gaza Telegram account. A photograph of a different document, dated 2024, which was posted on a different social media channel, instructs a named individual to present themselves at the 'Nasser Medical Centre'. A source said that some letters suggest that coming to the hospital would result in 'free food parcels', exploiting people's need and then luring them into punishment or investigation. They alleged: 'It's become a tool for controlling aspects of life in Khan Younis.' Another pointed to the white off-road vehicles pictured outside the hospital, alleging that they are the same as used during the hostage handover ceremonies in January and February. However, it was not possible to verify this claim. In April, Dr Mohammed Saqer, the director of nursing at the site, posted on social media that armed men had come to his office and directly threatened him. He also showed a photograph of a piece of paper warning him that he had 'crossed the red line… wait'. That was signed by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terror group allied to Hamas. The battle from a fortnight ago has caused a ripple effect of retaliatory violence in an area that is already traumatised by 21 months of war. Hamas subsequently issued a wanted list of those they claimed were responsible for the attack, demanding that they be turned in within 24 hours. At least one video purporting to show the murder of a man allegedly involved in the battle has been circulated online by prominent pro-Hamas accounts. Israel is accused of laying siege to various hospitals in the Strip, and in some cases firing on people leaving. According to the World Health Organisation, 94 per cent of hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. At Nasser hospital, doctors warned on Friday of an impending disaster because of a shortage of fuel. It was forced to stop admitting patients the previous day after Israeli tanks advanced to within 200 metres of the complex. Dr Victoria Rose, a senior plastic surgeon from London, recently completed a deployment at the Nasser hospital. She said she saw dozens of dead bodies arrive with gunshot wounds following mass shootings at aid stations. In an interview with the New York Times, she said she had seen an increase in patients with unsurvivable burns or severe blast injuries from Israeli bombs, and that the hospital was struggling to cope with the stream of traumatic injuries.
RNZ News
11-07-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
East Sepik Province in PNG gets innovative to solve health issues
Allan Bird says that in the absence of functioning medical facilities around the province, they got no choice. Photo: AFP PHOTO/Torsten BLACKWOOD The governor of East Sepik Province in Papua New Guinea has announced a partnership with a local pharmacy to improve access to drugs and medicines. A deal between City Pharmacy Limited, the Provincial Health Authority, and the Provincial Government aims to ensure that Sepik residents have fast access to quality medicines, free of charge. The provincial government is making a payment of PGK 500,000 (about US$118,000) from the Provincial Services Improvement Program (PSIP) to the pharmacy company. The company has outlets in Wewak and Maprik, with others planned in Angoram and Boram Hospital. RNZ Pacific asked the East Sepik Allan Bird if half a million kina would be enough. (This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity.) ALLAN BIRD: No it won't. We've got three million in the budget for that. We're just starting off with half a million because, like everything that's new, no one's ever tried this in Papua New Guinea before. But I'm sick and tired of waiting for a corrupt, incompetent national government to respond, because I cop all the flack when there's no medicine in East Sepik, even though it's not my job. So, I've decided to bite the bullet, and fortunately, there's a local company that's honest and transparent. It's not one of these 'fly by night' companies that sort of do deals in dark corners, and there's massive kickbacks. City Pharmacy Limited has been operating in Papua New Guinea for, I don't know, maybe 30 or 40 years. It's owned by our Super Fund. Essentially, the Papua New Guinean workers own a majority of the shares there. So that gives me the confidence to work with them. Allan Bird says no one's ever tried this in Papua New Guinea before. Photo: Facobook / Allan Bird Of course, that they've had two pharmacies in my province operating, you know, almost 200 kilometers apart in my province. There's reach there. When we run out of medicine at the hospital, people come running to me, or they run to another member of parliament asking for us to help them pay for medicine, that's one, they can't find us, then the poor doctor or the nurse or some other medical worker who's already struggling to look after their own family has to fork the money out of their own pocket. This system that we're using has been used by City Pharmacy Limited for, I think, a number of years, with the medical insurers in the country. I'm just really pleased that they're happy to try it out with us. We're running a trial, and then every month, we get a report and we have a look and see how it's working. Because the last thing you need is it's hard enough accessing medical services, not just in my province, but in the whole country. But once people get to the end of the line and they get diagnosed, and the clinician turns around and says, 'Look, sorry, we got no medicine. Here's the prescription. Can you go buy it?' This person's been waiting, traveling, waiting, all of that is probably 24 hours, 36 hours just to get that far and be told, Look, you got to go buy your own medicine. And so given that sort of scenario I want to be able to sleep well at night knowing that my people are being looked after. If the system works out, and the whole country wants to adopt it. I've been critical of the medical suppliers in Papua New Guinea since the day I walked into parliament. It's one of the biggest rorts in this country, and it continues to be so. DON WISEMAN: It's not your only concern about the health sector in East Sepik, is it? You've been at the [Boram] Hospital recently and you weren't impressed? AB: I knew for a while. I knew, like a year and a half ago, that because the rest of the health system - we're rebuilding the entire health system in my province. So let me just start by saying that. But I didn't know that we had makeshift facilities because all the other facilities around the province are not functioning, and this specialist hospital, which, when we first designed it, we didn't design it with what you might call an outpatient facility, because it's not meant to have one. But in the absence of functioning medical facilities around the province, we've got no choice. We got to bite the bullet. So I allocated the money sometime last year, about 18 months ago. I hate these government systems that take so long. And I was quite crook on Monday morning as well Sunday and at 2am in the morning I had to go to the hospital. And I think maybe God wanted me to be sick so I could see all of this. So when I saw it, it broke my heart. I mean, these are the people I represent. So I've said to them, Look, you guys, have 60 days to rectify this. The money is there. I want this facility built, you know, I don't want to come here and see the same thing happening again. So we've got really crazy systems, you know what I mean? And they're so cumbersome, you know, it just doesn't help us. But I've said to them, 'Look, I respect the processes, but can we push it a little bit faster? Because 18 months is simply unacceptable.' Now you've got people lying around in the corridor, out in the open with an IV in their arm, sleeping on the floor. That would be unacceptable anywhere else in the world. It should also be unacceptable here.
Japan Times
23-06-2025
- Health
- Japan Times
Childbirth facilities disappearing from Fukushima towns
Medical facilities capable of delivering babies are vanishing from Fukushima Prefecture's rural regions. In the town of Hanawa, Hanawa Kousei Hospital stopped handling childbirths at the end of February, leaving just 26 medical facilities in seven cities in the prefecture that can handle deliveries. The number represents a decrease of about 40% over the past decade, which reflects a growing concentration of childbirths in urban areas. Municipal governments are increasingly concerned that changes in the environment for pregnancy and childbirth may accelerate population decline. On Jan. 22, Hanawa Kousei Hospital posted a notice on its website, saying, 'We have worked for many years to enhance perinatal medical services. However, due to various circumstances, it has become difficult to maintain our delivery system, and we have decided to suspend inpatient delivery practices in our obstetrics and gynecology department.' The hospital's OB-GYN department was established in 1966. For nearly 60 years, it catered to the needs of pregnant women from municipalities in the Higashi-Shirakawa district — Tanagura, Yamatsuri, Hanawa and Samegawa — handling around 600 deliveries annually at its peak. In recent years, it remained the only delivery facility in the district, managing about 50 births a year. Behind the suspension is a shortage of medical personnel. The hospital used to have about eight midwives, but the number has gradually declined due to retirement and resignations. Most recently, deliveries were handled by just one OB-GYN doctor and three midwives. Although the hospital continues to offer prenatal checkups and cancer screenings at its OB-GYN department, its withdrawal from the delivery of babies has created a strong sense of loss and anxiety about the future among local residents. Hanawa Mayor Hidetoshi Miyata, 75, expressed deep concerns, saying the suspension is a 'serious blow' to the town. 'If there's no environment in town where people can give birth with a sense of security, more young people may leave, which will accelerate the decline in the number of children." The number of births in Hanawa has been steadily falling, with the town's population dropping from about 13,500 in 1970 to around 7,800 today. The town is rushing to boost support for pregnant women and new mothers. There is a national program that subsidizes 80% of transportation costs for prenatal checkups at the nearest delivery facility if it takes over an hour to reach by public transportation or private car. The town expands on this program and fully covers transportation costs — be they for trains, buses or taxis — regardless of travel time. How to maintain the childbirth environment is a challenge shared by rural communities across Japan. Over a decade ago, Iwasa Clinic in Daigo, Ibaraki Prefecture, which borders the southern part of Fukushima Prefecture, also stopped handling deliveries. It now only provides outpatient services. 'From the perspective of hospital management, some reduction in delivery facilities is unavoidable,' Miyata said. However, the mayor stressed that municipalities in the Higashi-Shirakawa district will continue to urge hospitals not to reduce obstetric services any further, given the importance of perinatal care. Hanawa Kousei Hospital in Fukushima Prefecture stopped handling childbirths at the end of February. | Fukushima Minpo As of April 1, there were 26 facilities that can handle deliveries in Fukushima Prefecture, down from 41 in 2015. Only seven cities — Fukushima, Koriyama, Sukagawa, Shirakawa, Aizuwakamatsu, Minamisoma and Iwaki — had such facilities, while 52 other municipalities in the prefecture had none. According to the prefecture's regional medical service division, medical institutions have suspended deliveries due to the retirement of doctors and the declining birth rate, among other reasons. Municipalities without delivery facilities are facing a growing need to ensure that women can give birth safely and with peace of mind outside their residential areas. Saki Ohira, who lives in the town of Tanagura with her husband, Masataka, is expecting twins in late July. But she is worried about having to go to a hospital far away to give birth as her town has no delivery facility. The couple, both 34, are eagerly awaiting the arrival of their first children as they look at ultrasound images of them. Ohira has been preparing to give birth at the International University of Health and Welfare Hospital in Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture, which is about an hour's drive from her home using the expressway. 'To be honest, I wish there was a nearby place to give birth safely,' she said. The couple met as classmates at a local high school, got married in 2019 and now run a stationery store in their town. After confirming the pregnancy in November, Ohira has been going for checkups about once every two weeks. Her parents, who live in the town of Yabuki, have been taking her to the hospital while her husband works. The financial burden for the trips is not small. In addition to fuel costs, using the Tohoku Expressway incurs about ¥1,500 ($10.40) in toll fees each way. Ohira finds it troubling that there are so few OB-GYN facilities nearby. She had hoped to give birth at a medical facility closer to home, such as Shirakawa Kosei General Hospital in the city of Shirakawa, but her primary doctor recommended the one in Nasushiobara because she is expecting twins. 'I'm worried there is nowhere to go if my condition suddenly changes,' she said. Her husband also worries, saying, 'In an emergency, even a slight delay could affect the safety of both mother and children. "If there were a more reassuring environment for childbirth, it would ease our mental burden," he added. Their concerns about crossing prefectural borders for childbirth extend into the postnatal period as well. It is said that around 10% of new mothers experience postpartum depression, a condition in which feelings of sadness or anxiety occur after childbirth. However, no medical facilities in the Higashi-Shirakawa district appear to offer postpartum care services. Before reaching the stable period of her pregnancy, Ohira learned that deliveries would be suspended at Hanawa Kousei Hospital. 'Traveling to a distant hospital is going to be really difficult while taking care of two infants,' she said. For couples such as the Ohiras, the growing dearth of medical facilities capable of handling deliveries means more long-distance travel for childbirth. In response, prefectural and municipal governments have increased financial support for such couples, such as by providing them with transportation subsidies for prenatal checkups and lodging expenses so that they can stay near hospitals before the due date. Beyond just financial assistance, however, Ohira feels there is a need for support channels to provide a sense of security to expectant parents. 'If we had a local consultation desk staffed by experienced midwives or nurses who could listen to our concerns, I think that would really help pregnant women feel more secure,' she said. Ohira noted that her and her husband's visits to the out-of-prefecture hospital began with infertility treatment. Experts say expanding medical services that assist couples looking to conceive is also crucial in addition to maintaining the perinatal care system. This section features topics and issues covered by the Fukushima Minpo, the prefecture's largest newspaper. The original articles were published April 29 and April 30.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Russia has damaged, destroyed over 2,300 medical infrastructure facilities since beginning of full-scale invasion, health ministry says
Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what's in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience. Generate Key Takeaways Russian forces have damaged or destroyed more than 2,300 medical infrastructure facilities since the start of the full-scale invasion, the Health Ministry said on May 7. Russia deliberately targets critical infrastructure on a regular basis in Ukraine, including medical facilities, resulting in severe destruction and numerous civilian casualties. Some 2020 medical facilities were partially damaged, while another 305 were completely destroyed, the ministry's statement read. Medical facilities in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Mykolaiv, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were most affected. Throughout the all-out war, one of the most destructive Russian attacks on medical facilities in terms of casualties was on the Ohkmadyt children's hospital in Kyiv. Russian forces hit Ukraine's largest children's medical center on July 8, killing two adults and injuring at least 34 people, including nine children. Footage showed that the building suffered a direct hit by a Russian missile rather than being damaged by fallen debris. The missile, fired from a plane of the 22nd Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Division, kept maneuvering and changing its flight path, indicating an intention to bypass Ukrainian air defenses and hit the medical facility, according to Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). Apart from hospitals, outpatient clinics, and maternity hospitals, Russian troops regularly attack ambulances. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 116 ambulances have been damaged, 274 destroyed, and 80 seized. Ukraine and its international partners have managed to fully rebuild 700 medical facilities and partially restore 312, including critical hospitals and primary health care centers in the frontline regions. Read also: 'She fed all the birds, dogs, and cats' — 64-year-old animal rescue volunteer and son killed in Russian attack on Kyiv We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
Reuters
06-05-2025
- Health
- Reuters
Attack on MSF hospital in South Sudan was deliberate, U.N rights commission says
NAIROBI, May 6 (Reuters) - A bombing attack on a Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital and pharmacy in South Sudan over the weekend was deliberate and may amount to a war crime, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said on Tuesday. MSF said on Saturday that at least seven people had been killed and 20 wounded in South Sudan's Fangak county when a bomb was dropped on the pharmacy, burning it to the ground and damaging the hospital, followed by another drone attack on Old Fangak, a town in the Greater Upper Nile region. No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came on the heels of air strikes and heavy clashes in the region in recent months between national forces and an ethnic militia allegedly allied with First Vice President Riek Machar. "This was not a tragic accident. It was a calculated, unlawful attack on a protected medical facility," Yasmin Sooka, chair of the commission, said in a statement. "The aerial bombing of the MSF hospital in Old Fangak is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and could amount to a war crime ... "Targeting medical facilities and services violates the Geneva Conventions and represents a direct assault on foundations of humanitarian action that are intended to protect civilians in conflict zones." Information Minister Michael Makuei did not respond to requests for comment. South Sudan has officially been at peace since a deal in 2018 ended a five-year civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and fighters loyal to Machar. But the house arrest of Machar in March on accusations of trying to start a rebellion has sparked international concern that conflict could reignite.
