‘It’s basically hell on earth’: Gaza City left totally bereft of healthcare

In the early hours of Saturday morning, over piles of concrete and rubble, crowds of doctors and patients walked miles through the destroyed streets of Gaza City, forced to evacuate on foot from what remained of its hospitals. Medics said they feared leaving critically ill patients behind in a city now largely reduced to rubble and overtaken by Israeli forces, where hospitals had been operating without power, fuel, water or food.

“It’s basically hell on earth,” said William Schomburg, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, describing what remained of life inside the city.

With Major Gaza Hospitals Under Threat, EU Calls For Cease-Fire

As the Israel Defense Forces attack two major hospitals in Gaza, patients and staff are facing imminent danger of dying, prompting more calls for a cease-fire, including from the European Union, according to multiple reports.

Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital, is without electricity and lacks vital resources as the Israel Defense Forces continues to bombard the facility. The Israeli government says Hamas militants built a command complex under the hospital. Hamas and hospital officials have denied militants are hiding under the facility. 

Israel's president denies it is striking Gaza's Al-Shifa hospital

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has denied that Israel is striking the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip.

The UN has said the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital is dire, with constant gunfire and bombings in the area.

Doctors there have said newborn babies have died after power for incubators was cut off due to a lack of fuel.

When challenged by the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg about those reports, Mr Herzog rejected them as "spin by Hamas" and insisted there was electricity.

Netanyahu rejects growing calls for a cease-fire as Israel battles Hamas outside main Gaza hospital

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Saturday against growing international calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel’s battle to crush Gaza’s ruling Hamas militants will continue with “full force.”

A cease-fire would be possible only if all 239 hostages held by militants in Gaza are released, Netanyahu said in a televised address.

The Israeli leader also insisted that after the war, now entering its sixth week, Gaza would be demilitarized and Israel would retain security control there. Asked what he meant by security control, Netanyahu said Israeli forces must be able to enter Gaza freely to hunt down militants.

Are Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s hospitals legal?

Fears are mounting that Gaza’s hospitals, many already on the brink of collapse, may come under intensified attack as the Israeli military moves deeper into the enclave.

In recent days, Israeli warplanes have been circling closer to two hospitals in Gaza City – al-Shifa and al-Quds – bombing areas in their immediate vicinity. Both hospitals have received orders by the Israeli military to evacuate, a demand that doctors and independent experts say is impossible to fulfil, given the large numbers of patients in their wards, including patients on life support.

Investigations reveal discrepancies in Israel’s Gaza hospital attack claims

The United Nations on Friday called for an independent international investigation into a devastating blast at a packed hospital in Gaza City earlier this week, as the conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas rages on.

Palestinian officials in the besieged Gaza Strip blamed an Israeli strike for the explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, while the Israeli army said it was caused by an errant rocket fired by the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which denied the assertion. Israel’s ally the United States has also put the blame on Palestinian fighters, while Arab states have blamed Israel.

Revealed: how Russia deliberately targeted Kherson’s hospitals

Russia has “deliberately and repeatedly” targeted medical facilities in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, causing damage to children’s hospitals, maternity wards and a regional clinic, according to a new study.

Russian troops swept into Kherson last year in the early days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion. In November, Ukraine’s armed forces evicted them from the southern city as part of a sweeping counteroffensive.

Government Ignored Horrific Abuse At Indian Hospitals, Lawsuit Alleges

EDMONTON — Ann Hardy was 10 years old when she contracted tuberculosis, said goodbye to her Metis family in Fort Smith, N.W.T. and was taken to the Charles Camsell Indian Hospital in Edmonton in 1969.

Over five months, she was treated for the infectious disease in the segregated facility but said she was also sexually assaulted several times by an X-ray technician.

Syrian hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders hit by airstrike

An airstrike in the northern Syrian province of Idlib destroyed a makeshift clinic supported by an international aid group on Monday, killing at least seven people and wounding many others, activists and the group said.

In the neighbouring Aleppo province, a missile struck a children's hospital in the town of Azaz, killing at least five people and wounding dozens on Monday. And in a nearby village, an air raid hit a school, killing seven and wounding others.

Another Doctors Without Borders Hospital Hit By Airstrikes

DUBAI, Oct 27 (Reuters) - A Yemeni hospital run by medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) was bombed in a Saudi-led air strike, wrecking the facility and wounding several people, the hospital director said on Tuesday.

A Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war in March to try to restore its government after its toppling by Houthi forces but the civilian death toll has escalated since then, alarming the United Nations and human rights groups.

Why Bombing a Hospital Is a War Crime

“We tried to take a look into one of the burning buildings. I cannot describe what was inside. There are no words for how terrible it was. In the Intensive Care Unit six patients were burning in their beds.”

So said Lajos Zoltan Jecs, a nurse at the hospital the U.S. bombed in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 22 people: doctors, staff, patients (including three children). This image is now spiraling through the Internet and across the global consciousness.

The US Massacre in Kunduz Exposes the Bankruptcy of Obama’s National-Security Policy

The aerial destruction that rained down on a hospital complex run by Doctors Without Borders in Kunduz, a provincial capital in northeast Afghanistan, on October 3 puts an exclamation point on the story of America’s 14 years of warfare in that Central Asian country. At least 22 people were killed, among them doctors, other medical personnel, and patients, including three children, and dozens were wounded in the attack.

‘Look for Hospitals as Targets’ -- The historical record suggests that the US bombing of an Afghan hospital may not have been an accident.

“Bombing of Hospitals Called Routine.” That was the August 9, 1973, Newsday coverage of congressional hearings on “clandestine U.S. air and ground activities in Cambodia and Laos”:

U.S. commanders in Vietnam placed no restrictions on ground or air attacks against Viet Cong or North Vietnamese hospitals a Senate committee was told yesterday by several Vietnam veterans.

There Are 10 Times More Mentally Ill People Behind Bars Than in State Hospitals

Severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are brain diseases—biological conditions like heart disease or epilepsy. Yet in this country, the institutions most likely to be treating people with these illnesses are not hospitals, but rather jails and prisons.

According to a new report from the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit advocacy organization, the United States has fully returned to the 18th-century model of incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional institutions rather than treating them in health care facilities like any other sick people. In 2012, there were roughly 356,268 inmates with severe mental illnesses in prisons and jails, while only 35,000 people with the same diseases were in state psychiatric hospitals.

New Data Shows How Hospitals Rip You Off

The United States has long been known to have one of the most expensive hospital systems in the world, and now a new study indicates that hospitals are overcharging patients for medical services.

According to the study published Monday by National Nurses United, the largest nurses' organization in the United States, the price of many services has skyrocketed since the mid-'90s. Many hospitals have set charges at 10 times their cost. The 100 most expensive hospitals in the country, for example, in 2011 charged 765 percent of their costs, or $765 for every $100 of total costs.

NYC's Disappearing Neighborhood Hospitals

For many New Yorkers, the trip to treat a broken appendage or receive vaccination shots is growing longer. Since 2000, nineteen hospitals across the city have closed due to financial pressures—a number that could have even been higher had a judge not recently ordered Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Brooklyn to resume services.

Nurses gathered outside LICH in early July to deliver a nearly 7,000-signature petition to SUNY Downstate Chancellor Nancy Zimpher’s New York City office demanding she stop the process of closing the hospital. Journalist Sarah Jaffe reported that after a SUNY representative refused to comment on the ongoing situation, the crowd turned to civil disobedience and blocked the doors to the building and refused to move until police took them away in cuffs.

Hospital parking fees in GTA spark grassroots campaign

You could call it an urban humanitarian mission, of sorts.

A grassroots campaign that John Hazelwood and Alan Powell believe will help make the lives of the most vulnerable in the province a little easier, and perhaps a little less painful — especially on the wallet.

The object of their offence couldn’t be any more loathed, or any more complex: hospital parking fees.

Hospital Parking Tickets Incense Dad Of Dying Child

A father who has been enduring the dread of watching his child die of cancer has lashed back at what he calls an insensitive bureaucracy that continues to leave parking tickets on his car outside a St. John's hospital.

"Having a child in this situation is a mix of sadness, of anger, of just frustration," said Robert Thornhill, whose three-year-old daughter, Erica, suffers from acute myeloid leukemia, and is being treated at the Janeway children's hospital.

Federal Law Promising Price Cuts On Hospital Bills In Limbo

WASHINGTON (AP) — Huge list prices charged by hospitals are drawing increased attention, but a federal law meant to limit what the most financially vulnerable patients can be billed doesn't seem to be making much difference.

A provision in President Barack Obama's health care overhaul says most hospitals must charge uninsured patients no more than what people with health insurance are billed.

Ontario hospitals absorb health costs to treat refugees

A year after Ottawa cut health funding for refugees, Ontario hospitals are absorbing the costs or pursuing those patients for unpaid medical bills.

Hospitals in Greater Toronto are hardest hit by the changes, made effective by the federal government last June, since the majority of refugees are destined for this province.