ABC

The Guardian

NY Times

“….Drug treatment, mostly for psychosis, blunted day-to-day symptoms of hallucinations and delusional thinking. But it did not reduce the length of time people were held in chains at the camp.…”

British Journal of Psychiatry

“Care of people with serious mental illness in prayer camps in low-income countries generates human rights concerns and ethical challenges for outcome researchers.

To ethically evaluate joining traditional faith healing with psychiatric care including medications (Clinical trials.gov identifier NCT02593734).

Residents of a Ghana prayer camp were randomly assigned to receive either indicated medication for schizophrenia or mood disorders along with usual prayer camp activities (prayers, chain restraints and fasting) (n = 71); or the prayer camp activities alone (n = 68). Masked psychologists assessed Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) outcomes at 2, 4 and 6 weeks. Researchers discouraged use of chaining, but chaining decisions remained under the control of prayer camp staff.

Total BPRS symptoms were significantly lower in the experimental group (P = 0.003, effect size –0.48). There was no significant difference in days in chains…..”

Chatham House

Authors

“Summary
• In some parts of the world it is common practice for patients to be detained in hospital for non-payment of healthcare bills.
• Such detentions occur in public as well as private medical facilities, and there appears to be wide societal acceptance in certain countries of the assumed right of health providers to imprison vulnerable people in this way.
• The true scale of these hospital detention practices, or ‘medical detentions’, is unknown, but the limited academic research to date suggests that hundreds of thousands of people are likely to be affected every year, in several sub-Saharan African countries and parts of Asia. Women requiring life-saving emergency caesarean sections, and their babies, are particularly vulnerable to detention in medical facilities.
• Victims of medical detention tend to be the poorest members of society who have been admitted to hospital for emergency treatment, and detention can push them and their families further into poverty. They may also be subject to verbal and/or physical abuse while being detained in health facilities.
• The practice of detaining people in hospital for non-payment of medical bills deters healthcare use, increases medical impoverishment, and is a denial of international human rights standards, including the right not to be imprisoned as a debtor, and the right to access to medical care.
• At the root of this problem are the persistence of health financing systems that require people to make high out-of-pocket payments when they need healthcare, and inadequate governance systems that allow facilities to detain patients.
• Universal health coverage (UHC) cannot be achieved while people are experiencing financial hardship through their inability to pay for healthcare, so by definition any country that allows medical detention is failing to achieve UHC.
• Health financing systems should be reformed by moving towards publicly financed UHC, based on compulsory progressive pre-payment mechanisms. This would enable hospitals to become financially sustainable without the need to charge significant user fees……”

Lancet

“…..Between early November, 2015, and Dec 31 2016, 938 people were directly harmed in 402 incidents of violence against health care: 677 (72%) were wounded and 261 (28%) were killed. Most of the dead were adult males (68%), but the highest case fatality (39%) was seen in children aged younger than 5 years. 24% of attack victims were health workers. Around 44% of hospitals and 5% of all primary care clinics in mainly areas with a substantial presence of armed opposition groups experienced attacks. Aerial bombardment was the main form of attack. A third of health-care services were hit more than once. Services providing trauma care were attacked more than other services……”

Thomas Reuters

“…..The Thomson Reuters Foundation survey asked experts in women’s issues in 19 megacities how well women are protected from sexual violence, and from harmful cultural practices, and whether they have access to good healthcare, finance and education……”

The worst:

• Cairo (#1)
• Karachi
• Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of the Congo
• New Delhi

The best: 

• London (#1)
• Tokyo
• Paris

“…..Delhi and Sao Paulo emerged as the worst cities when respondents were asked if women could live there without the risk of sexual violence, including rape, attacks or harassment…”

“….Authorities recorded four rapes every hour in India in 2015….”

The poll

Miami Herald

Bobby Owens, 84;

Manuel Mario Mendieta, 96;

Miguel Antonio Franco, 92;

Estella Hendricks, 71;

Gail Nova, 71;

Carolyn Eatherly, 78;

Betty Hibbard, 84;

Albertina Vega, 99.

“…..yet to be determined is how long these vulnerable people — either residents or recovering from surgery — were left in such stifling heat and, most important, why…..

The eight nursing-home residents who died were not the only seniors trapped by sketchy planning. In Miami Dade, WLRN reporter Nadege Green found elderly residents in a series of Coconut Grove senior-living apartments who remained trapped, no elevator, no electricity; on Tuesday, about 50 residents of a senior-citizens tower in Miami’s Civic Center neighborhood damaged by Irma were being taken to a shelter…..”

FOX News

• “We will not tolerate injustice.”
• PM lambasted Buddhist-majority Myanmar for “atrocities”
• PM had “no words to condemn Myanmar”
• At least 313,000 Rohingya have flooded into Bangladesh since Aug. 25
• The U.N. human rights chief said the violence and injustice faced by the ethnic Rohingya minority in Myanmar seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”
• Bangladesh has said it would free 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of land for a new camp in Cox’s Bazar district, to help shelter newly arrived Rohingya. The government was also fingerprinting and registering new arrivals.
• Kutupalong and another pre-existing Rohingya camps were already beyond capacity.
• Other new arrivals were staying in schools, or huddling in makeshift settlements with no toilets along roadsides and in open fields.  Basic resources were scarce, including food, clean water and medical aid.
• Aid agencies have been overwhelmed by the influx of Rohingya, many of whom are arriving hungry and traumatized after walking days through jungles or being packed into rickety wooden boats in search of safety in Bangladesh.
• In the last two weeks, the government hospital in Cox’s Bazar has been overwhelmed by Rohingya patients, with 80 arriving in the last two weeks suffering gunshot wounds as well as bad infections.
• At least three Rohingya have been wounded in land mine blasts
• Dozens have drowned when boats capsized during sea crossings.
• Before Aug. 25, Bangladesh had already been housing more than 100,000 Rohingya who arrived after bloody anti-Muslim rioting in 2012 or amid earlier persecution drives in Myanmar.

NY Times

Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic was established on 22 August 2011 by the Human Rights Council through resolution S-17/1 adopted at its 17th special session with a mandate to investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law since March 2011 in the Syrian Arab Republic.

The Commission was also tasked to establish the facts and circumstances that may amount to such violations and of the crimes perpetrated and, where possible, to identify those responsible with a view of ensuring that perpetrators of violations, including those that may constitute crimes against humanity, are held accountable.

UN

Aleppo aerial campaign deliberately targeted hospitals and humanitarian convoy amounting to war crimes, while armed groups’ indiscriminate shelling terrorised civilians – UN Commission

– See more at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=21256&LangID=E#sthash.l48EGFJw.dpuf