Latest news with #medicalaid
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Pursuit near Hillsboro, North Dakota, ends with man seriously injured
Jun. 1—HILLSBORO, N.D. — A police pursuit near Hillsboro over the weekend ended when a man crashed his motorcycle. The incident began shortly before 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 31, on Traill County Highway 81, about 5 miles south of Hillsboro. According to a report issued by the North Dakota Highway Patrol, a 19-year-old Gardner, N.D., man was driving a 2025 Kawasaki motorcycle. The driver's name has not yet been released. The release said law enforcement received a call about a reckless motorcycle driver on Interstate 29, near the Mayville exit. Troopers responded and tried to stop the motorcycle, but instead a pursuit began, eventually leaving the interstate and heading onto rural highways. According to the NDHP release, "the motorcycle failed to negotiate a curve in the roadway, entered the west ditch, overturned a number of times and came to rest in the ditch where the driver was ejected. NDHP personnel on scene rendered medical aid. The driver was transported by ambulance, then life-flighted to a local hospital." The driver of the motorcycle was wearing a helmet. The crash remains under investigation.
Arab News
13 hours ago
- Health
- Arab News
Medical NGO blames new US aid group for deadly Gaza chaos
RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders said Sunday that people it treated at a Gaza aid site run by a new US-backed organization reported being 'shot from all sides' by Israeli forces. The NGO, known by its French name MSF, blamed the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's aid distribution system for chaos at the scene in the southern Gaza town of Rafah. Gaza's civil defense agency said Israeli fire killed 31 Palestinians at the site. Witnesses told AFP the Israeli military had opened fire. The GHF and Israeli authorities denied any such incident took place but MSF and other medics reported treating crowds of locals with gunshot wounds at the Nasser hospital in the nearby town of Khan Younis. 'Patients told MSF they were shot from all sides by drones, helicopters, boats, tanks and Israeli soldiers on the ground,' MSF said in a statement. MSF emergency coordinator Claire Manera in the statement called the GHF's system of aid delivery 'dehumanizing, dangerous and severely ineffective.' 'It has resulted in deaths and injuries of civilians that could have been prevented. Humanitarian aid must be provided only by humanitarian organizations who have the competence and determination to do it safely and effectively.' MSF communications officer Nour Alsaqa in the statement reported hospital corridors filled with patients, mostly men, with 'visible gunshot wounds in their limbs.' MSF quoted one injured man, Mansour Sami Abdi, as describing people fighting over just five pallets of aid. 'They told us to take food — then they fired from every direction,' he said. 'This isn't aid. It's a lie.' The Israeli military said an initial inquiry found its troops 'did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site.' A GHF spokesperson said: 'These fake reports have been actively fomented by Hamas,' the Islamic militant group that Israel has vowed to destroy in Gaza.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Health
- Irish Times
Gaza's last hospitals battle to save patients amid severe depletion of life-saving medical items
No helium to operate MRI machines. No antibiotics to treat infected wounds. No room in surgery for general medical conditions, and no new tyres for ambulances wrecked by driving through Gaza 's bombed streets. This is the lot of the 19 hospitals still functioning – most only partially – in the devastated enclave where they serve a war zone with 2.1 million people that has received no significant medical aid for almost three months. The severe depletion of life-saving medical items in Gaza comes as Israel's offensive floods hospitals with casualties, their bodies torn and burned by bombs and often also crushed by the rubble of their collapsed homes. READ MORE 'There are countless examples of lives that could have been saved but were lost because of shortages, or because they could not be evacuated for treatment abroad,' said Allam Nayef, head of intensive care and anaesthesiologist at a field hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza run by the health ministry and MSF, the international medical charity. Infection is a major risk. 'Bacteria have become like monsters' in Gaza's hospitals, he said. A wounded Palestinian child, the only surviving child of doctor Dr Alaa al-Najjar, lies in a hospital bed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis after an Israeli airstrike hit their home. Photograph: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu One patient was injured so badly his feet had to be amputated, but 2½ months later Nayef found himself anaesthetising the same patient again: his wounds were infected and doctors could only save his life with a fresh amputation, this time above the knees. Gaza's hospitals have plunged further into crisis since Israel resumed its offensive on March 18th after breaking a two-month ceasefire. Local health authorities say more than 3,700 Palestinians have been killed and about 11,000 injured since then. Israel has laid full siege to the territory since March 2nd, preventing all aid deliveries and pushing the population to the brink of famine . In recent days it has allowed limited humanitarian aid to enter, but UN officials have described this as a 'drop in the ocean' compared with the need. [ In pictures: Many in Gaza face malnutrition as blockade enters third month Opens in new window ] During the ceasefire, medical supplies had surged into the enclave, and the World Health Organisation built up stocks in warehouses and hospitals. But doctors say crucial items have now run out or become so depleted that their use is severely rationed. Trauma doctors must resort to inadequate workarounds to try to save lives, while the lack of supplies is causing needless deaths and greater pain for those who survive. 'If someone needs 20 tablets of antibiotics, we give them four,' said Raafat al-Majdalawi, director general of the Al-Awda Health and Community Association, which operates two hospitals in the strip. One of them, Al-Awda hospital, the last functioning medical facility in northern Gaza, was evacuated of all staff and patients on Thursday evening on orders from the Israeli military, according to the UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, citing hospital director Mohamed Salha. The hospital had been encircled by Israeli troops and repeatedly shelled this month. 'Inpatients still needed care,' Salha said. 'However, the shelling continued and directly targeted the hospital, leaving us with no choice.' In the hospitals still operating, doctors are severely limited in their ability to help patients. 'There is no scope to prescribe all that an injured patient needs,' said Taisir al-Tanna, a vascular surgeon at Al-Ahli hospital in North Gaza. 'I am restricted by what can be found here.' Wounded Palestinian children and babies are brought to the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital after an attack by the Israeli military on the Zaytoun Quarter of Gaza Strip on May 29th. Photograph: Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images The hospital was forced to close for weeks after Israeli air strikes in mid-April destroyed the emergency ward. It has since reopened, but Tanna, who carries out up to a dozen surgeries each day, said he lacked crucial materials such as artificial blood vessels to replace damaged arteries; correctly sized sutures for vascular repair; and specialised catheters to remove blood clots during surgical procedures. This month Tanna operated on a 26-year-old bombing victim with a gash in his abdomen that severed a main artery supplying blood to the lower limbs. No artificial blood vessels were available so he used a surgical plastic tube, known as a shunt, hoping that within 48 hours an artificial vessel could be found. 'We couldn't get one, and a foot turned gangrenous, so we had to amputate it,' said Tanna. In the absence of many kinds of antibiotics and disinfectants, and with the injured packed into overcrowded wards, post-operative infection is a major scourge, said Nayef. One cause of infection, he said, was the use of external fixators — long pins piercing the skin attached to a metal frame outside the body that are used to hold broken bones together. They carry a bigger risk of contamination than other methods of setting bones, but doctors have to rely on them because of a shortage of screws and plates used for internal fixation. The lack of a functioning MRI machine has cost yet more lives, said Nayef. He and other doctors could not intervene to save the 20-year-old son of a colleague whose neck was wounded by shrapnel. 'He had a lentil-sized hole, and it appeared his spinal cord had been injured,' said Nayef. 'We needed an MRI scan to assess the damage so we could treat him or try to evacuate him from Gaza.' The injury affected an area in the spinal cord that controlled breathing, said Nayef. The man remained on a ventilator suffering lung infections until he died. Nayef himself, like most Palestinians in Gaza, has been displaced multiple times. Until he moved to Deir al-Balah this month, he worked in the Gaza European hospital in Khan Younis, but it closed on May 13th after a series of Israeli strikes. That meant the loss of another 25 emergency beds, Nayef said. Israel said it was targeting Mohammad Sinwar, the Hamas chief in Gaza, at the hospital. It has subsequently said Sinwar was killed. The WHO said this month that 94 per cent of all hospitals in Gaza had been 'damaged or destroyed'. Some 18 non-profits working in the strip, including Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians, on Wednesday said the attacks on hospitals 'violate international humanitarian law and are part of the systematic dismantling of Gaza's already fragile health system'. [ I showed my friends in Israel this photo of a starving baby in Gaza and asked them if they knew Opens in new window ] 'All we do now is war medicine, to try to save a life or save a limb,' said Nayef. 'There is no scope for scheduled operations and for most reconstructive surgery. 'If we get a mass casualty event, we have to start with those most likely to survive, and by the end we will have lost two or three of the others.' Victoria Rose, a UK plastic surgeon volunteering at the Nasser Medical complex in Khan Younis, described the situation there as 'absolutely dire' as doctors struggled to treat 'more and more' casualties. 'We are running out of basic things like blades for scalpels, gloves, gauze and solutions to clean the skin with,' she said. Patients' recovery is being badly delayed by another factor: malnutrition. Starvation is creeping through the enclave as food stocks dwindle. Patients 'don't have the vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals that they need to heal', said Rose. Ahmad al-Farra, head of paediatrics at the same hospital, said this was the war's most critical period. 'There is starvation, fear, and people are being forced to evacuate from place to place,' he said. 'In two or three weeks, no vaccines will be available to give to any child. All the diseases that are preventable will come back.'– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
The Herald
6 days ago
- Business
- The Herald
Less than a third of children live with both parents, grant dependency high: Stats SA survey
Improved access to electricity has had major implications for households, Stats SA said. The percentage of households that used electricity as the main source of energy for cooking increased from 57.5% to 77.3%, while households that used paraffin decreased to 2.2% (from 16.1%) and households that used wood or coal decreased from 23% to 8%. Gas increased from 2.2% to 7.2%. Access to electricity also enables wider use of household electrical appliances. Stats SA found 88.3% of households owned an electric stove (up from 78.7% in 2012), while 80.9% of households owned a fridge (up from 70.1% in 2012). About 59.3% of households owned a microwave oven. More than one-third (35.9%) of households experienced load-shedding or power interruptions during the week before they were interviewed. Households employed a variety of alternative energy sources for cooking. Nationally, 28.2% used LPG/gas and 25.2% used open fires burning a variety of materials such as wood, coal and charcoal. Social trends About three out of 20 South Africans had access to a medical aid scheme in 2024. Coverage declined slightly from 15.9% in 2002 to 15.5% in 2024. The highest coverage rates were in the Western Cape (25.4%) and Gauteng (21.3%), while the lowest were in Limpopo (10%) and KwaZulu-Natal (10.2%). The report revealed a decline in traditional radio ownership as a result of access to alternative media such as TV and internet. The percentage of households that owned a radio decreased from 79.8% in 2002 to 31.3% in 2024, while household ownership of TV sets increased from 57.4% in 2002 to 77.5% in 2024. Pay TV subscriptions increased from 29.2% in 2012 to 58.6% in 2024. As the percentage of households that used landlines decreased from 25.5% in 2002 to 3.4%, a ccess to mobile phones exploded and 96.1% of households owned at least one mobile phone in 2024. The percentage of households who had access to the internet through any other means increased from 28% in 2010 to 82.1% by 2024. Access to the internet through fixed lines at home hovered at about 10% between 2010 and 2021, before increasing to 17.4% in 2024. TimesLIVE
Al Bawaba
6 days ago
- Politics
- Al Bawaba
Colombia appoints its first ambassador to Palestine
ALBAWABA - Colombia appointed Jorge Iván Ospina, a former mayor of Cali and close to President Gustavo Petro, as its first ambassador to Palestine, the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Monday. Also Read Israel: 3 rockets fired from Gaza, 1 intercepted Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced in May 2024 the severing of diplomatic relations with Israel and accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of carrying out "genocide" in Gaza. Nonetheless, the president announced the opening of a Colombian embassy in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Infinita gratitud al Sr Pdte de la República @petrogustavo y a la Sra Canciller @laurisarabia por designarme como Embajador de nuestra Nación ante el heroico pueblo Palestino, la solidaridad, la denuncia al genocidio que hoy sufren, la libertad de quienes hoy no están, los retos — Jorge Ivan Ospina (@JorgeIvanOspina) May 26, 2025 Jorge Iván Ospina, following his appointment as "ambassador to Palestine," announced that Colombia will be providing medical treatment to "thousands" of Palestinians injured during the war in the Gaza Strip. The ambassador further told the Associated Press (AP) that Colombia is paying special attention to treating kids wounded in Israeli airstrikes, without explaining how patients would be evacuated to Colombia or how Palestinian families could apply for treatment there. He said, "The world cannot turn a blind eye to civilians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. People must not die of hunger. They must receive immediate medical care, and their rehabilitation must be ensured."
