Tag: health

Six children die of malnutrition in Gaza hospitals: Health Ministry | Israel War on Gaza News

Six children have died from dehydration and malnutrition at hospitals in northern Gaza, the Health Ministry in the besieged Palestinian territory has said, as the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the besieged enclave worsens.

Two children died at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the ministry said on Wednesday. Earlier it reported that four children died at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, while seven others remained in critical condition.

“We ask international agencies to intervene immediately to avert a humanitarian catastrophe in northern Gaza,” Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qudra said in a statement, as Israel’s attacks on Gaza continue.

“The international community is facing a moral and humanitarian test to stop the genocide in Gaza.”

Kamal Adwan Hospital’s Director Ahmed al-Kahlout said that the hospital had gone out of service due to a lack of fuel to run its generators. On Tuesday, Al-Awda Hospital in Jabalia also went out of service for the same reason.

In a video posted on Instagram and verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification unit, journalist Ebrahem Musalam shows an infant on a bed inside the pediatric department at Kamal Adwan Hospital, as power comes in and out.

Musalam said the children in the department are suffering from malnutrition and a lack of infant formula, and that necessary devices have stopped working due to the constant power outages as a result of fuel shortages.

Palestinian group Hamas on Wednesday said that the closure of Kamal Adwan Hospital would exacerbate the health and humanitarian crisis in Northern Gaza, which is already teetering on the brink of famine as Israel continues to block or disrupt aid missions there.

‘Killing and starvation’

On Wednesday, Israel said a convoy of 31 trucks carrying food had entered northern Gaza. The Israeli military office that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs, the Coordination of Government Activity in the Territories (COGAT), also said nearly 20 other trucks entered the north on Monday and Tuesday.

These were the first major aid deliveries in a month to the devastated, isolated area, where the United Nations has warned of worsening starvation.

Israel has held up the entry of aid into Gaza for weeks, with Israeli protesters taking part in demonstrations calling for no aid to be allowed into the territory, even as hunger and disease spread.

UN officials say Israel’s months-long war, which has killed nearly 30,000 people in Gaza, has also pushed a quarter of the population of 2.3 million to the brink of famine.

Project Hope, a humanitarian group operating a clinic in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, has said that 21 percent of the pregnant women and 11 percent of the children under the age of five it has treated in the last three weeks are suffering from malnutrition.

“People have reported eating nothing but white bread as fruit, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods are nearly impossible to find or too expensive,” Project Hope said.

In a joint communique on Wednesday, Qatar and France stressed their opposition to an Israeli military offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza and underlined their “rejection of the killing and starvation suffered by the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip”.

They called for the opening of all crossings into Gaza, including in the north, “to allow for humanitarian actors to resume their activities and notably the delivery of food supply and pledged jointly $200m effort in support of the Palestinian population”.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, also said Israel must allow aid trucks into Gaza in order to address the dire humanitarian crisis.

“Hundreds of aid trucks wait in line to cross into Gaza at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom [Karem Abu Salem] crossings to a starving civilian population,” Egeland said in a social media post, with a video showing scores of aid trucks lined up.

“There has not been a single day we have gotten the needed 500 trucks across. The system is broken and Israel could fix it for the sake of the innocent.”

Medical aid group Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has meanwhile said that medical workers are struggling to serve hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza who are living in dire conditions with nowhere to go.

“Healthcare has been attacked, it’s collapsing. The whole system is collapsing. We are working from tents trying to do what we can. We treat the wounded. With the displacements, people’s wounds have been infected. And I’m not even talking about the mental wounds. People are desperate. They don’t know anymore what to do,” MSF’s Meinie Nicolai said.



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What happens when Gaza’s health system collapses? | Israel War on Gaza

Gaza’s medical infrastructure was woefully inadequate, but now even that has been destroyed by Israel’s war.

The Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis was the last big medical facility in the Gaza Strip destroyed by Israel’s war.

The World Health Organization says Israel killed 627 doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and other healthcare workers between October and January.

With almost no supplies entering Gaza, what is next for the 2.3 million Palestinians forced to live in inhuman conditions?

Host Steve Clemons speaks with Dr Thaer Ahmad, an emergency room physician in Chicago who recently returned from volunteering at Nasser Hospital; and with Dr Muaiad Kittaneh, a haematologist/oncologist who co-founded the Palestinian-American Medical Association.

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Where ‘love transcends language’: Kashmir’s silent village | Health

Dadkhai, Jammu and Kashmir, India – Dressed in their finest shalwar-kameez and sporting well-trimmed moustaches, a group of men deliberate over the terms of a dowry, as the women prepare halwa with dried fruit and a pot of traditional, salty Kashmiri tea, in the adjacent kitchen.

In the modest home of Muhammad Sharief in Dadhkai, a tiny community nestled high in the Himalayan mountains, the two families have gathered to plan the upcoming marriage of Reshma Sharief, 19, and Mukhtar Ahmed, 22.

Muhammad Sharief, 40, the father of the bride, waits patiently as the men continue their discussions. They ultimately agree upon a dowry of $1,200 in cash, plus a few gold ornaments. The elder men murmur prayers as sweet treats are brought out from the kitchen. The home’s rough-cut wooden roof, mud floor and bright walls, coloured in pink and green, hum with the sounds of celebration.

But while the two families have followed all the customary nuptial rules, this marriage will be far from ordinary: Both the bride and groom, like dozens of others in their village, are deaf-mute.

Misra Begum and Muhammad Sharief, the parents of the bride, sit in front of the groom’s father, Ghulam Khan, after the marriage-fixing ceremony has finished [Sharafat Ali/Al Jazeera]

The condition has spanned generations of Dadhkai since the first case was recorded more than a century ago. Whenever a marriage takes place, thoughts inevitably turn towards the day the new couple has children. Even when the parents are not deaf-mute, there is always a fear that their children will be.

“We confront this fear with unwavering faith, bravely pushing it back into the shadows,” says Muhammad Hanief, the village head attending the festivities at the Sharief household.

Throughout the celebration, the bride-to-be remains in the kitchen, adhering to the traditional conservative values of her Gujjar ethnic group. Her fiance attends to the guests, helping to serve food as family members offer their congratulations.

Alam Hussain, 63, is one of the oldest deaf-mute people in the village community of Dadkhai – and the only one of his family with the condition [Sharafat Ali/Al Jazeera]

Outside in the courtyard, villager Alam Hussain, an elderly man with a white beard, deep wrinkles and a skinny build, quietly tends to a herd of cattle. At 63, he is among the oldest deaf-mute people in the village, and the only one in his family with the condition.

“I don’t remember how many deaf-mute people there were during my childhood; memory betrays me in my old age,” Hussain says, pointing an index figure to his head while shaking his other hand in the air, conveying his struggle with memory loss.

He communicates through a sign-language interpreter: his neighbour, Shah Muhammad, who treats Hussain with respect and deference, pointing to the high esteem in which elders in this community are held.

But Hussain, who is unmarried, spends much of his time alone. The only work he finds is in the summer, when he takes cattle out to graze. In the past, he says, it was particularly challenging for deaf-mute villagers to find a partner. As the number of people unable to hear or speak has grown over the years, the social landscape in Dadhkai has shifted.

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Why is measles making a comeback in the UK? | Health News

On Tuesday, the first case of measles in seven years was reported in Northern Ireland.

Outbreaks of measles have sprung up in parts of Britain in recent months amid concerns of what Dr Vanessa Saliba from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), has called a “worryingly low MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine uptake in some areas across the country”.

So where and why is measles on the rise in the UK?

How quickly is measles spreading in the UK?

In the four weeks since January 22, 169 new cases of measles have been recorded in England, taking the total number of confirmed cases there since the start of October to 581.

To put that into perspective, there were only two confirmed cases of measles across the whole of the UK in 2021 and 54 one year later.

This month, a man in his 40s died in Ireland after contracting the virus during a visit to the West Midlands in England, where UK measles cases are among the most prevalent and at their highest since the 1990s. That case has focused the minds of many health professionals in the British Isles.

This week’s case reported in Northern Ireland was found in an adult who also became infected while travelling. Measles, which was recorded as long ago as the ninth century by Persian doctor Rhazes, can be serious for both adults and children.

What are the symptoms of measles, and can it be fatal?

If coughs and sneezes spread diseases, then measles is one such illness to which that old adage applies.

Common symptoms of measles, which is caused by a virus, include a high fever, sore and watery eyes, coughing and sneezing. These symptoms are accompanied by a red rash all over the body. While measles can be contracted at any age, children are most at risk.

Most people who catch measles recover within seven to 10 days, but in more serious cases, it can cause pneumonia, meningitis, seizures, complications leading to blindness and even death.

In more affluent parts of the world, measles is fatal in about one in 5,000 cases. But in poorer regions with less robust healthcare systems, as many as one in 100 who catch measles will die from it. Over the past decade, deadly measles outbreaks have been documented in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Samoa and Pakistan among other countries.

A child with measles who has developed complications that may leave her blind is treated in a hospital isolation ward in Mongala province in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo [File: Hereward Holland/Reuters]

How helpful are vaccines?

Prior to the introduction of the first measles vaccine in 1963, 2.6 million people died from the disease worldwide each year. In 2016, despite a much higher overall global population, 90,000 people died from measles. In 2017, the World Health Organization declared that the UK had eliminated measles as a result of vaccine use.

Roald Dahl, the Welsh-born children’s author, lost his daughter Olivia to the virus in 1962 at the age of seven after she developed measles encephalitis.

While the measles vaccine came one year too late to protect Olivia Dahl, an improved version that caused fewer side effects was developed in 1968 by which time inoculations had been rolled out across parts of Africa.

The MMR vaccine, first introduced in Britain in 1988 and still used today, offers lifelong protection against measles, mumps and rubella and is 99 percent effective. As part of the UK national vaccination programme, it is normally given to children in two doses: at 12 months and again at around three years and four months.

A triple-shot MMR vaccination is now used across many parts of the world. It has proved highly effective in reducing infections.

According to the World Health Organization, “between 2000 and 2020, measles vaccination prevented an estimated 31.7 million deaths worldwide.”

Why are people choosing not to have the vaccine in the UK?

In England, the most populous of the UK’s four constituent nations, uptake of the MMR vaccine in children for 2022-2023 was recorded at about 85 per cent, the lowest level since 2010-2011, sparking fears that this highly contagious but preventable disease could make a comeback in Britain.

Despite saving millions of lives globally, the MMR vaccine has proved fertile ground for conspiracy theorists.

The British physician Andrew Wakefield made headlines in 1998 when a study he wrote was published in the international medical journal The Lancet. His study linked the MMR vaccine to the development of autism in children despite his findings being based on only 12 patients.

Dr Andrew Wakefield, centre, speaks at the General Medical Council on January 28, 2010, in London. The council found he acted ‘dishonestly and irresponsibly’ in carrying out his research after his 1998 study caused vaccination uptake rates to drop dramatically [File: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images]

Wakefield was later unveiled as a fraud. He was found to have had a financial interest in claiming a damaging link to the MMR vaccine, and his conclusions were debunked. But the damage was done.

The average uptake of MMR in England dropped sharply from 91.8 percent in 1996 to 79.9 percent in 2004, and cases of measles rose, largely as a result of his false claims.

Experts said today’s drop in MMR uptake in Britain – the National Health Service England said 3.4 million children under 16 have not been inoculated – is down to a number of factors.

They include a conflation of anti-vax conspiracy theories during the pandemic when myths peddled about the COVID-19 vaccine rubbed off on the MMR vaccine, causing scepticism in some parents. In 2019, the European Commission and the World Health Organization urged governments to take action against the spread of misinformation about vaccines.

Which other diseases are threatening a comeback in the UK?

Cases of tuberculosis (TB), an illness caused by a bacterial infection that many in Britain today associate with the Victorian and Edwardian eras, rose by 11 per cent last year in England.

There were, according to the UKHSA, 4,850 cases of TB in England in 2023 as opposed to 4,380 in 2022.

TB, known as “consumption” in the 1800s because sufferers often lost weight and almost wasted away, commonly affects the lungs, and symptoms include a persistent cough, a high temperature and loss of appetite.

As was the case in the past, TB remains linked to poverty and deprivation, but can be successfully treated today with antibiotics. However, if left untreated, TB can still prove fatal.

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‘They could have done more’: Zimbabweans slam gov’t anti-cholera campaign | Health

Harare, Zimbabwe – When Priscilla Moyo’s husband Brian returned home to Harare from Mvurwi, about 100km north of the capital on Sunday night, he seemed well. By 11pm, he was battling diarrhoea.

When his situation was still the same on Tuesday morning, 39-year-old Moyo took him to a nearby clinic in Budiriro, the city suburb where they live. On arrival, she was told that her husband had cholera.

“He is being treated right now in there,” she said dejectedly pointing in the direction of a grey tent, a makeshift treatment ward at the clinic. “He is on an intravenous drip and they say he might go home today.”

Across Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces, a deluge of cases of cholera infections is crippling health facilities in the Southern African country. Some patients like Brian, have recovered.

Others have not been as lucky.

Jessica Muzambezi, a young mother in the same suburb, lost her two-year-old son to cholera. “A burst sewer in my area caused the death of my son. The authorities did not attend to the sewer for two weeks,” she told Al Jazeera.

As of Tuesday, 25,780 cases of cholera have been recorded in Zimbabwe since the epidemic began last year. While the official government death toll stands at 470, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), which is coordinating the mobilisation of resources for the anti-cholera campaign in conjunction with Zimbabwean authorities, put the number at 528. Children remain the most vulnerable, with a third of all cases affecting youngsters aged 15 and below.

And many Zimbabweans say the government is to blame.

A persistent problem

Zimbabwe’s sewage system, part of its inherited colonial infrastructure, has been overwhelmed as the population grew from about 3.7 million in 1960 to 17 million today. And potable water remains unavailable in many parts of the country, as the struggling economy is yet to update that infrastructure.

That, experts say, has made it easy for cholera, an infectious disease primarily transmitted through contaminated water or food, to spread rapidly.

In 2008, as many as 4,000 people died from cholera in the country during what is regarded as one of the worst episodes of the epidemic on the continent. Then, like now, the public health crisis was caused by poor sanitation and a lack of clean water. It was worsened by a crumbling healthcare system that deteriorated as the world’s worst hyperinflation crisis  – peaking at 79.6 billion percent on a month-to-month basis – surged in Zimbabwe, rendering the local currency useless.

The government of then-president Robert Mugabe blamed Western governments for the disease outbreak. Senior officials in his administration said the cholera epidemic was the outcome of a “serious biological chemical war” and a “calculated racist terrorist attack” being waged against Zimbabweans.

More than 15 years later, the city is facing another public health crisis, with the capital being the hot spot again.

While infections are rising nationwide, Harare, the country’s most populous province, has the highest concentration of new cases, accounting for a third of the total.

A quick drive around southern suburbs of the city like Budiriro, Glen View, and Highfield reveals dozens of tents donated by the World Health Organization (WHO) being manned by local health professionals.

Zimbabwean authorities have also been distributing vaccines to minimise the impact of the epidemic. The country has received 97 per cent of the 2.3 million doses approved by the International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision( ICG) as of February 12, with more to come later in the month. According to UNICEF, 1.5 million people (67 percent of the target population) had received an oral cholera vaccine (OCV) dose as of February 14.

In January, the health ministry launched Operation Chenesa Harare – a campaign named after the Shona word for “clean up” – after residents resorted to using undesignated dumping sites to cope with piling rubbish. Some say the garbage was left to pile up in the first place because not enough resources had been allocated on time.

‘It’s only fiction’

But there are fears that the mitigation efforts are coming too late and just as importantly, do not tackle the root of the problem. Some experts and activists also argue that the authorities have yet to learn lessons from the past.

Joyleen Nyachuru, a resident of Glen View and a community water alliance leader, is one of them. She blames local and central governments for the latest epidemic.

“They could have done more to minimise the impact of cholera on residents by coming together to contain raw sewer leaks and should have worked together to upgrade the old sewer infrastructure that continues to break down,” Nyachuru told Al Jazeera.

“In Glen View, we have 12,800 houses and each house has four to five households. This means each house houses 15 to 20 people using the same house and the same toilet,” she said, adding that the authorities need to provide clean potable water to every resident of the city to curb cholera.

For years, the city has not pumped water to many Harare households. Now, water flows through the taps once a week in most southern suburbs. Rubbish is still a common presence on street corners in the city despite government intervention.

This, according to Nyachuru, has also compounded the cholera situation.

Precious Shumba, director of the nonprofit Harare Residents’ Trust agrees.

“The major problem is that underground water and sewerage pipes are aged and sand blocked, resulting in numerous leakages along the water and sewerage infrastructure network,” Shumba told Al Jazeera, adding that sewer bursts in industrial areas of the city also stay unfixed for long periods.

But Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume said in addition to the vaccination programme, city authorities have intensified sewer repairs and are working on improving potable water supply to the city. Things would change for the better soon, he told Al Jazeera.

“The numbers have gone down significantly and we are confident we will turn the cholera tide,” Mafume said.

But his comments have not pacified most residents of the city who say they are now used to flowing sewage and being forced to find their own solutions.

“On the ground, the authorities are doing nothing … when the city says it will fix or is fixing our problems, it’s only fiction,” Nyachuru said. “They [officials] were only on the ground during the Chenesa Harare campaign. After the campaign, nothing has been happening.”

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Hospitals in South Korea cancel surgeries as doctors keep up protests | Health News

Seoul’s biggest hospitals reduce surgeries by a third as trainee doctors continue strike over health reforms.

Hospitals in South Korea have been forced to cancel or postpone surgeries and medical procedures, including treatments for cancer, according to media reports, as more trainee doctors walked off the job in protest over proposed health reforms.

The reports on Thursday came as the South Korean government called on the doctors to hold talks and threatened to arrest those leading the walkout.

So far, some 9,275 trainees or almost two-thirds of the country’s young doctors have joined the protest against the government plan’s to increase the number of students admitted to medical schools.

The plan was announced as part of a bid to bolster the healthcare system in one of the world’s most rapidly ageing societies.

Doctors claim the changes will hurt service provision and education quality, but critics say the trainees are mainly concerned the reform could erode their salaries and social prestige.

The Yonhap news agency, citing medical sources, said the work stoppage has forced five of the biggest general hospitals in the South Korean capital, Seoul, to drastically reduce surgeries and medical procedures.

“Surgeries were cut in half at Severance Hospital in central Seoul, with St Mary’s Hospital and Asan Medical Center in southern and eastern Seoul, respectively, reducing their surgery capacities by 30 percent,” the agency reported.

These included patients awaiting treatment for cancer as well as pregnant women.

Hong Jae-ryun, a brain cancer patient in his 50s, told the AFP news agency that his chemotherapy had been postponed without clear future dates due to the current situation, even though the cancer has spread to his lungs and liver.

“It’s absurd. In the midst of the conflict between the government and doctors, what can powerless patients say? It feels like a betrayal,” Hong said. “When there is no one to trust and rely on other than doctors, it seems excessive to handle things in this manner.”

The Hankyoreh newspaper meanwhile said several hospitals were delaying C-sections for pregnant women and telling them epidural anaesthesia during labour would not be available.

An official at the Severance Hospital said the facility did not have “anesthesiology interns and residents, and that means we can’t administer epidurals”.

The government of President Yoon Suk-yeol, which has ordered the striking doctors to return to work, said on Tuesday that it will seek arrest warrants and launch investigations for those spearheading the walkout.

“If illegal collective action actually results in damage to the lives and health of patients, (trainee doctors) will be held accountable to the highest level,” the government said, according to Yonhap.

Public surveys meanwhile show that most Koreans support the government’s plan, with a recent Gallup Korea poll showing about 76 percent of respondents in favour, regardless of political affiliation.

The protesters, however, say South Korea has enough doctors, and that the government needs to increase pay and reduce the workload, particularly in key areas such as paediatrics and emergency medicine, before recruiting more students.

Park Dan, head of the Korea Interns and Residents Association which is taking part in the protest, said he was willing to be arrested so that the doctors’ demands are heard.

“Everyone is angry and frustrated, so we are all leaving hospitals. Please hear our voices,” he said in a radio interview, adding they were open to dialogue if the government was ready to hear their demands.

Hundreds of Seoul doctors plan to hold a rally late on Thursday in front of President Yoon’s office, according to the Seoul Medical Association.

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Israeli siege turns Gaza’s Nasser Hospital into ‘a place of death’ | Israel War on Gaza News

Officials from the United Nations who conducted evacuation missions from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital have described “appalling” conditions at the enclave’s second-largest medical facility, saying an Israeli military operation there has transformed a “place of healing” into a “place of death”.

The comments, in videos posted online on Wednesday, came amid growing concern for the dozens of patients and staff who remain trapped inside the hospital amid intensified Israeli bombardment of the area.

The hospital, in Gaza’s Khan Younis city, stopped functioning last week after a week-long Israeli siege followed by a raid, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The global health agency, along with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), has so far managed to evacuate some 32 critical patients, including injured children and those with paralysis.

Jonathan Whittal, an OCHA official who took part in the evacuation missions on February 18 and 19, said patients at the hospital were in a “desperate situation” and were trapped without food, water and electricity.

“The conditions are appalling. There are dead bodies in the corridors,” he said. “This has become a place of death, not a place of healing.”

The rescue mission has previously said they had to navigate through pitch-black corridors with flashlights to find patients against a backdrop of gunfire. They had to arrive on foot because a deep, muddy ditch near the hospital has made roads near the site impassable.

“You can think about the worst situation ever. You multiply that by 10 and this is the worst situation I have seen in my life,” said Julio Martinez, a WHO staff. “It’s the debris, it’s the light – working in the darkness. Patients everywhere.”

According to Palestinian health authorities, at least eight patients have already died at the facility, mostly due to fuel a lack of fuel and oxygen. They say the lives of those remaining were directly threatened and accused Israeli forces of effectively converting the site into “military barracks”.

Chris Black, a WHO communications officer, said the entire neighbourhood around the hospital has been “damaged and destroyed”.

“The hospital itself has no electricity, has no food, has no water,” he added.

The WHO said some 130 severely injured patients and 15 medics remain at the site.

Despite the desperate situation, doctors and nurses at the hospital were pleading not for evacuation, but for the functions of the hospital to be restored, according to a former colleague of theirs.

“The last week has been miserable. It’s been a nightmare [for workers in the hospital]. The things they’re seeing are traumatising and they’re asking for some sort of help,” said Dr Thaer Ahmad, a United States-based emergency physician who spent several weeks volunteering at the Nasser Hospital in January.

“They’re asking, actually, not to be evacuated from the hospital but for the hospital to function. For the lights to be turned back on, for the medicine they need to treat the patients that remain,” he said.

“I spoke to one of the last surgeons remaining there, who sent a message to a group of physicians here in the US, and he asked us to advocate for the patients who are there. He told us, ‘I’m staring at patients, and they need my help, they need my care, and there’s nothing that I can do’,” added Ahmad.

The WHO said it was continuing efforts to evacuate further patients.

The agency, in a statement earlier this week, described the dismantling and degradation of the Nasser Hospital – the latest medical facility to become a theatre of war in the conflict between Israel and Hamas – as a “massive blow” to Gaza’s health system. It said the remaining facilities in the south were “already operating well beyond maximum capacity” and barely able to receive additional patients.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 29,092 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli assaults since October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack inside southern Israel.

Some 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas attacks in Israel.

 

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Why has the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos are ‘children’? | Health News

The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision that has drawn criticism from the White House and the top US infertility association.

Here is more about last week’s ruling and its implications for fertility treatment in Alabama.

What has the Alabama court ruled about embryos?

Three couples filed a lawsuit against a fertility clinic after their frozen embryos for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) were destroyed. The embryos, stored in a cryogenic nursery, were destroyed by a patient who wandered into the nursery and accidentally dropped several of them on the floor.

A lower court ruled the embryos could not be defined as people or children and dismissed the wrongful death claim.

However, in a 7-2 ruling, the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court disagreed. Citing Bible verses and an 1872 state law called the Wrongful Death of a Minor Act, Justice Jay Mitchell declared parents may sue over the death of a child regardless of whether the child is born or unborn.

Mitchell said the court had previously ruled that fetuses killed while a woman is pregnant are covered under the same act and nothing excludes “extrauterine children from the act’s coverage”.

What are frozen embryos?

IVF is an assisted reproduction method in which eggs are removed from the ovaries and fertilised with sperm outside the body. The resulting embryos can be frozen through a process called cryopreservation and then saved for later use.

The embryos can be placed in a woman’s uterus to cause pregnancy. This treatment method is used by couples who have been unable to conceive due to health issues in either the male or female partner.

The 14th Amendment to the US Constitution says a person is a citizen when they are born. This implies an unborn fetus does not have the same rights as a citizen.

In the 1970s, lawyers representing Texas in the landmark Roe v Wade abortion case before the US Supreme Court argued that a fetus is a person, entitled to the rights detailed under the 14th Amendment. In 1973, the court ruled that Texas was wrong and the constitution protected a right to abortion.

However, when Roe v Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, many states quickly introduced laws to ban abortion.

Not all these abortion laws establish fetal personhood or the idea that fetuses have the same rights as fully developed, born children. Many also do not specify if an embryo, which does not develop into a fetus until the end of the 10th week of pregnancy, is included in this. Now, it seems, Alabama has decided it should be.

What are critics of the ruling saying?

The Alabama ruling is “a cause of great concern for anyone that cares about people’s reproductive rights and abortion care”, said Dana Sussman, deputy executive director of Pregnancy Justice, an advocacy organisation for reproductive rights.

She called the decision a “natural extension of the march toward fetal personhood”.

The Medical Association of the State of Alabama warned in a brief to the court of the possible detrimental impact of the ruling on IVF treatment in Alabama.

The ruling could possibly substantially increase the costs associated with IVF, it explained. The fear of being sued may result in Alabama’s fertility clinics closing and fertility specialists moving to other states, potentially making fertility treatments such as IVF inaccessible to people in Alabama.

Could this ruling have an impact on reproductive healthcare in Alabama?

The ruling could potentially impact fertility treatments and the freezing of embryos, which had previously been considered property by the courts.

“This ruling is stating that a fertilised egg, which is a clump of cells, is now a person. It really puts into question the practice of IVF,” Barbara Collura, CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, told The Associated Press.

In a statement, Resolve described the decision as a “terrifying development for the 1-in-6 people impacted by infertility” who could be helped by in vitro fertilisation.

As an immediate result of the ruling, at least one Alabama fertility clinic has been instructed by their affiliated hospital to pause IVF treatment, according to Sean Tipton, a spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

Dr Paula Amato, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, said a decision to treat frozen fertilised eggs as the legal equivalent of a child or gestating fetus could limit the availability of modern health care.

“No healthcare provider will be willing to provide treatments if those treatments may lead to civil or criminal charges,” Amato said.

“Without IVF, I would have to probably go through several more miscarriages before I even had an option of having a baby that is my own,” said 26-year-old Gabby Goidel, who had been pursuing IVF treatment in Alabama.

What is the ethical case?

While some Americans believe that embryos are children, many researchers, scientists, doctors and academics do not agree.

Ethics studies assert that what makes us human is our brain, which gives us consciousness. “The fertilised egg is a clump of cells with no brain,” wrote Michael S Gazzaniga, a cognitive neuroscience professor at Dartmouth College, in his book The Ethical Brain.

Gazzaniga added that no sustainable or complex nervous system is in place until about six months of gestation.

Jonathan Crane, a professor of bioethics and Jewish thought at the Center for Ethics at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, said in an interview with an Ohio publication in 2018 that embryos are not equivalent to humans and can develop into fetuses only inside the uterus.

How have reproductive healthcare laws affected other states?

After Roe v Wade was overturned, 24 US states had enacted laws designed to ban all or nearly all abortions by January 2023. In North Dakota and Wisconsin, abortion is not available at all, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a global research organisation for reproductive rights.

While the overturning of Roe v Wade brought a storm of abortion bans across the US, it did not affect the legality of IVF procedures, which remain legal in all states, including Alabama, for now.

However, this latest ruling is likely to cause confusion and reignite discussions about whether IVF should be restricted, experts said.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said the Alabama ruling is “exactly the type of chaos that we expected when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for politicians to dictate some of the most personal decisions families can make”.

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Zimbabwe nurses seek better conditions abroad but fear for patients at home | Health

Harare, Zimbabwe – In December 2021, Setfree Mafukidze, his wife and four children moved to Somerset in Northern Ireland, joining a long list of health workers who have fled Zimbabwe to escape economic and political turmoil.

For four years, he had worked as the head nurse at the only clinic in Chivu, a town about 140km (90 miles) south of Harare.

By his estimate, he cared for more than 10,000 people there. Despite earning only about $150 a month, he would often dip into his own pockets to pay his patients’ bills.

Once, a patient with meningitis needed $200 to buy lifesaving medication, a huge sum in a country where a third of the population live on no more than $1 a day. Neither the patient nor his mother had the funds, so Mafukidze appealed to well-to-do Zimbabweans in the diaspora to help. After they did, he drove back and forth to the capital, Harare – a 12-hour journey in all – to get the drugs.

For Zimbabweans who saw people like Mafukidze as heroes, their departures are seen as a great loss.

“He would attend to people at any given time during emergencies and could make follow-ups at our homes,” said Tawanda Mabuwu, a Chivhu resident. “When my sister who was his patient died after he departed for the UK, he sent his wife with clothes for Christmas for the two orphans my sister left. He was just good, and we keep on losing our best.”

Fleeing Zimbabwe

After Brexit in 2016 and COVID-19 four years later led to a shortage of skilled professionals in the UK, the country eased entry rules, leading to an increase in work visas issued to foreign health and social care workers.

From September 2022 to September 2023, 21,130 Zimbabweans were given visas to work in the UK, according to Home Office data. It was a 169 percent increase from the same period the year before, putting Zimbabwe among three countries – alongside Nigeria and India – with the largest number of citizens heading to the UK on this visa.

In November, the World Health Organization said the number of public sector health workers in Zimbabwe had been reduced by at least 4,600 since 2019 despite increased recruitment.

Five health workers told Al Jazeera they would jump at an opportunity to work abroad. Dozens of WhatsApp groups have been created with those who have left offering tips to members who are looking to leave or are in the process of doing so.

“Nurses in Zimbabwe are not paid well enough to stick around when an opportunity to leave arises. It’s all about remuneration. It’s all about conditions of service,” said Mafukidze, who decided to leave to give his children better opportunities and advance himself academically.

A healthcare worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity to Al Jazeera said he used to earn the equivalent of $150 per month but now gets 3,000 pounds ($3,782) per month after taxes.

Beyond pay, many healthcare workers in the African nation said they opted to migrate because of the general state of the healthcare sector. Health training schools are ill-equipped and have too few tutors. Hospitals lack functioning equipment and have inadequate drug supplies and poor working conditions.

The situation has been worsened by a deepening economic crisis that President Emmerson Mnangagwa has been unable to halt since toppling Robert Mugabe in November 2017 in a military coup.

“At the moment, there are shortages of staff, leading to burnout to those who are there. … The buildings are dilapidated. People need competitive salaries, and the issue of the economy must be addressed,” said Enock Dongo, president of the Zimbabwe Nurses Association.

Zimbabweans living in border towns are increasingly crossing to neighbouring South Africa and Zambia for healthcare. In 2022, an official in South Africa’s Limpopo province was caught on camera saying the country’s healthcare system was being overwhelmed by an influx of Zimbabwean patients.

Donald Mujiri, spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health, did not respond to Al Jazeera’s questions about the continuing migration or the state of healthcare in Zimbabwe.

Solwayo Ngwenya attends to a patient at Mpilo Hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe [Clemence Manyukwe/Al Jazeera]

A continuing dilemma

Despite being separated by oceans, many health workers abroad still keep in touch with their former patients and become sad whenever they get news of a death.

“I’m emotionally attached because I know that when someone has to reach a person who is more than 10,000 miles (16,000km) away from them for that kind of assistance, it means there is a gap. There is definitely a gap,” said Mafukidze, who is in his 40s.

That continuing bond has now led to a personal dilemma for dozens of these emigrants watching helplessly as Zimbabwe’s healthcare system and economy continue to deteriorate: to remain in their new homes where their time and talents are better rewarded or return home to help the patients they left behind.

“I have had a long list of patients, people who believed in my services, who constantly reach out to me, … and I have constantly helped them over the phone, but I have always felt I was better off on the ground,” Mafukidze said. “Unfortunately along the way, some have been lost, and it gives me some sadness to say maybe if I was there, things could have been different. … That feeling grips me [like] I neglected people back home.”

He delivers consultations virtually by WhatsApp or calls, focusing on diabetes care after having lost his mother to the ailment when he was only 12 years old.

Another nurse who left for Somerset in 2019, Tapiwa Mujuru said he was attached to teenagers who were born HIV-positive while working at a Harare facility.

“I used to tell them that they were going to make it, … but when I told them I was leaving, I saw self-doubt in their eyes. To tell you the truth, I felt bad about leaving, but I had to leave. I feel better that we still talk on WhatsApp,” he said.

In one WhatsApp group with 48 health workers, there was a unanimous agreement that they would like to return home one day. In similar groups, the matter is being debated too.

In one such group, members said once they build houses in Zimbabwe and secure their future through investments and savings, they will return. But for now, they are staying away until the pay increases and working conditions improve.

The group’s members have other complaints. The list of patients at British public hospitals are longer than back in Zimbabwe. For instance, waiting times for general practitioner appointments often take three to six months. Some said they are still finding it tough adapting to the weather. Others feel homesick and crave the communality and social life back in Zimbabwe.

Some nurses also said they need a second job to get by. While they earn more, their bills have increased. But the skilled worker visa allows them to work only 20 extra hours at a second job, Mafukidze said, so finding one is tough.

Back in Zimbabwe, there are calls for them to start returning home to help rebuild.

Professor Solwayo Ngwenya, clinical director at Mpilo Hospital in Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, Bulawayo, once worked in the UK’s National Health Service. Six years after leaving for the UK, he retraced his footsteps and set up the 30-bed hospital he now heads.

“I had always wanted to return home, where I always felt I would do well and treat the local population. … I returned home in 2006 since I had accomplished what I had set out to achieve and for personal reasons,” he said.

He attributes his later achievements in life to returning to home soil and believes “home could be the best”.

Mafukidze is convinced that he and some of his peers abroad will return to Zimbabwe one day to help their compatriots.

“I know these people need me,” he said.

N.B. All dollar figures are in US dollars due to hyperinflation and the rapidly changing value of the Zimbabwe dollar.

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