Dive into the archives.
- Are They Going to Gaza Now?
[Israeli] operations at Port-au-Prince field hospital concluded with military ceremony. Col. Itzik Kreis thanks team and civilians treated on spot. ‘There are no other nations with strength, willingness, dedication, determination to help in this way. (full article…)
- This is Zionism
A Palestinian taken by ambulance to a Jerusalem hospital was denied entry by hospital security, which may have been a factor in his death, according to a suit filed last week in the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court. (full article…)
- Garrulous Senators
Two members deferred their blather until after the break. Chairman Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, had asked his colleagues to limit their remarks, but keeping a senator quiet may be the only task harder than producing a healthcare reform bill. The first votes on any actual proposed amendments to the bill weren’t expected until after [...]
- Scare Tactics from Your Friendly HMO
Many elderly Las Vegas residents were alarmed and confused Wednesday after receiving a mailer with an enclosed letter signed by the Chief Medical Officer of Humana Medicare, Philip Painter, claiming that Congress and the President are considering proposals to cut “important benefits and services” of Medicare. (full article…)
- American Politics
Take Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the chairman of the influential Senate Finance Committee, leader of the bipartisan “Gang of Six” spearheading the Finance Committee’s healthcare negotiations, and architect of that committee’s much anticipated healthcare legislation. He’s also one of the top five recipients of health industry-related money in Congress, pocketing $2.9 million in his career. [...]
- US Worst in Preventable Death Ranking
| Reuters
France, Japan and Australia rated best and the United States worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading industrialized nations, researchers said on Tuesday. (more…)
- The Real “Death Panels”
More than one of every five requests for medical claims for insured patients, even when recommended by a patient’s physician, are rejected by California’s largest private insurers, amounting to very real death panels in practice daily in the nation’s biggest state, according to data released Wednesday by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee. (more…)
- In the NYT Letters Section
The only real solution %u2014 one that replaces the profit motive with actually keeping us healthy and operates in most civilized nations on the planet %u2014 has already been taken off the negotiating table by our government-corporate plutocracy, and that is a single-payer system.(more…)
- Ha’aretz Selectively Reads the 2009 Arab Human Development Report
You can download the 2009 Arab Human Development Report here – but if you do, I suggest that you spend more time reading it that the correspondents of Ha’aretz apparently did. I came across an editorial entitled, “It’s a sorry plight to be a citizen in many Arab states”—a self-styled distillation of the report’s findings… [...]
- This is Zionism
Gaza: No right to life
- Occupation of the Palestinian Diet
After four pages filled with detailed charts of the number of grams and calories of every type of food to be permitted for consumption by Gaza residents (broken down by gender and age), comes this recommendation: “It is necessary to deal with the international community and the Palestinian Health Ministry to provide nutritional supplements (only [...]
- Gaza’ Suffering
The years of closed borders has severely crippled Gaza’s health sector, denying patients vital medicines, replacement parts for hospital equipment, access to outside medical care, and preventing the entrance of outside expertise. Moreover, Gaza’s civilian infrastructure was devastated during Israel’s three week assault on Gaza (December 2008-January 2009), making the treatment of patients within the [...]
- Medically Approved Torture
Evidence is emerging that medical personnel monitored the medical effects of the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaida operative who was, according to government reports, subjected to the near-drowning at least 83 times in August 2002. (more…)
- Israel, Fatah & Hamas: Enemies of the Palestinian People
However, a power struggle between Fatah and Hamas over the issuance of exit permits for patients, and Israel’s reluctance to issue visas for Gazans on the basis of alleged security, means Mohammed has to now wait for a new permit to return to the Israeli hospital. (more…)
- This is Zionism
Israeli authorities transferred ailing 60-year-old detainee Ahmad Al-Qiq from the Ar-Ramlah Hospital to the Ofer Detention Center near Ramallah despite the move meaning he can no longer receive adequate care, his family said Monday. (more…)
- Punishing the Victims
It is hard to think of another place in the world where life is ruled by such cruel absurdities. Hamas, Israel and Fatah are all playing with the lives and well-being of these patients, including 57 children from Gaza who need to complete complex, expensive treatments at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. Their health is now [...]
- This is Zionism
Discriminatory and unfair division of the shared water sources creates a chronic water shortage in the West Bank. Average per capita daily water consumption of Palestinians in the West Bank is two-thirds of the amount recommended by the World Health Organization. Due to the shortage, many Palestinians have to buy water from tankers at three [...]
- This is Zionism
Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to tend to the wounded. Sixteen of them were killed. According to the World Health Organisation, more than half of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were damaged by Israeli bombs. Two clinics were destroyed. In one incident, paramedics were fired on by a [...]
- Attacking Ambulances
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR) said Israel attacked 34 medical care facilities and prevented Palestinian medical teams from reaching the wounded during the offensive in December and January. (more…)
- Israeli War Crimes
They taught us to dread zarchan [from the Hebrew root to shine or glow]. They taught us, as medics, that if we treated a phosphorous wound, prepare for the worst. It doesn’t merely burn, they taught us, it burns first through the skin, then through the soft tissue, until it reaches bone. They taught us [...]
- Worse Than Killing People
I went to the burns department in Shifa hospital. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. These phosphorus burns. Their bodies were black. One person has stitches everywhere. It’s worse than killing people. They look like the living dead. I also went to the north, to Beit Lahiya. This was one of the [...]
- Egyptian Pawns
“That in 2009 they have people in need of help from a doctor and we can go to help and they won’t let us; this is crazy,” he added. (more…)
- The Complicity of Silence
“I am appealing to political leaders here and in the region and the world to get their act together and stop this,” he said, speaking at Gaza’s largest hospital. “They are responsible for these deaths.” (more…)
- Gaza Engulfed By Suffering
“Many people died while they were waiting to enter the operating rooms. Some died in the lobby of the hospital waiting to enter the reception area,” said Hussein Ashor, the hospital’s director. “There were not enough beds, so we pulled out the curtains and lay them on the ground, and we put patients on the [...]
- Chris Hedges: Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’
Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. [...]
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“We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket — high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food,” notes Michael Pollan, author of such books as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.” (more…)
- Narratives Under Siege: Deadline Looms For Another Student Trapped Inside Gaza
During the last two days of August, the Egyptian authorities permitted approximately 3,300 people to cross the Gazan border at Rafah into Egypt ‘for humanitarian reasons’. Those who entered Egypt included Gazan patients, students, and an undisclosed number of Egyptians who had been stranded inside the Gaza Strip. The sight of more than fifty busloads [...]
- Luisa Morgantini: Tony Blair Is Not Performing His Duty
It’s a very negative signal that the International Quartet Envoy Tony Blair’s planned trip to the Gaza was cancelled yesterday, Tuesday 15th July, following what was described as “specific security threats that made the visit impossible”. As a delegation of the European Parliament we visited, last June, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza Strip, West Bank [...]
- Fulbright Grants Denied to Gazan Students
What better way to punish Hamas than by punishing Gazan students? The American State Department recently withdrew the Fulbright Grants for Gazan students hoping to pursue higher education opportunities in the United States. And on what grounds? Well, it seems that because Israel isn’t letting them out anyway, it’s better not to waste money on [...]
- Nidal al-Mughrabi: Gaza’s Sick Fear For Their Lives
JABALYA, Gaza, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Ready to act fast to save his life, Maher Al-Assali’s young siblings stand at his bedside, poised to pump air through a hole in the 12-year-old’s neck when the ventilator that keeps him alive cuts out. Since being paralysed in a car accident seven years ago, Assali has depended [...]
- Safa Joudeh: Witnessing the Siege
It is supposed that one can build factual perception by reading the statistics and getting all the hard evidence, but I recently realized that a complete cognitive process relies first and foremost on visuals — seeing the picture for oneself. I joined a camera crew and producer shooting footage for a first-person interview on the [...]
- Mona El-Farra
Mona El-Farra is an inspiring individual. This modest and unassuming woman seems to have innumerable projects up her sleeve, ranging from her physician work at the Gazan branch of the Palestine Red Crescent Society to her role as Health Development consultant with the Union of Health Workers Committee. On her website profile, Ms. El-Farra writes [...]
