Doctors without borders

President Barack Obama has called and apologized to Doctors Without Borders chief Joanne Liu, whose staff and patients were killed and injured during a bombing Saturday in Kunduz, Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest says.

Doctors Without Borders issued a statement Sunday expressing its “clear assumption that a war crime has been committed,” after earlier saying that “all indications” were that the international coalition was responsible for the early Saturday morning bombing. While NATO maintains a significant military role in Afghanistan, airstrikes are conducted by U.S. forces

Civilians 'accidentally struck' in Afghan hospital bombing, U.S. commander says

The U.S. military has said that Saturday's airstrike came at the request of Afghan allies who asked for assistance after coming under fire.

The previous Afghan government was frequently critical of U.S. strikes that resulted in civilians deaths, but in this case Kabul has taken a more restrained tone.

Source http://time.com/4060686/doctors-without-borders-leaves-airstrike/?xid=newsletter-brief

"The President assured Dr. Liu that the Department of Defense investigation currently under way would provide a transparent, thorough and objective accounting of the facts and circumstances of the incident and, if necessary, the President would implement changes that would make tragedies like this one less likely to occur in the future," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.

Later Wednesday, Liu put out a statement saying that despite Obama's apology, "we reiterate our ask that the U.S. government consent to an independent investigation led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission to establish what happened in Kunduz, how it happened, and why it happened."

Source http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/07/politics/obama-calls-doctors-without-borders-president-apologizes/index.html

JUNIOR doctors in England are threatening to strike, in response to a new contract the government is trying to impose from August 2016. It is easy to see why. At the moment, any doctor working from 7pm to 7am on weekdays, or any time at the weekend, is considered to keep “antisocial” hours. They are rewarded with a higher rate of pay. Under the proposals, “social” hours are being extended, to include any time before 10pm, Monday to Saturday.

The change would wallop junior doctors, for whom pay outside their basic hours makes up one-third of their overall packet. NHS Employers, an industry body, has not provided many data, and the changes will affect doctors differently, but some could see a 20-40% pay cut. This would reinforce a secular decline in “real”, or inflation-adjusted, pay (see chart).

Source http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21667931-some-junior-doctors-consider-strike-while-others-pack-their-bags-doctors-without-borders

Chart http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/images/print-edition/20150926_BRC872.png

Doctors Without Borders USA

Disabled American Veterans

Ducks Unlimited

emergency medical services

Category: international needs

Headquarters: New York, NY

www.doctorswithoutborders.org

Top Person: Sophie Delaunay

Top Pay:⁴ $131,752

Fiscal Year ending on 12/31/09

Source http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/14/charity-10_Doctors-Without-Borders-USA_CH0059.html

The Big Dilemma Facing Doctors Without Borders

The non-governmental organization concedes it sometimes pays a moral price to save lives

Doctor without borders was just 6 years old in 1997 when it confronted the big first dilemma. How do you keep your mouth shut so you can help the victims? Or do you denounce the abuser and lose contact to those who need you most? This happened when one of the physicians took side and denounce Cambodian's Khmer Rouge for exterminating people.

For 40 years the organization, with a Nobel Award for his courageous, has tried to have both ways. At first the choices were fairly easy. Because 90 percent of the world`s displaced people were fleeing militant socialist governments, relief groups during the cold war shared the same ideological agenda as the Western democracies in which they were based.

When the Soviet Union fell, it was seen “as a fantastic opportunity” to crusade for human rights, says Fabrice Weismann, research director of the MSF Foundation (the organization is known by the initials of its French name, (Médicins Sans Frontiers'). But then the politics got muddier. “Aid came to be considered not as humanitarian relief, but to serve a political agenda in nation-building projects,” Weismann says. As MSF tried to steer a neutral course, it found that “one side thinks of you as leftist hippies,” while “the other thinks of you as colonial imperialists.” In 2004, NISF left Afghanistan after five of its aid workers were murdered, ostensibly by the Taliban. The killers had been identified, but the government did nothing to prosecute them.

With humanitarian workers being manipulated or scorned from all sides, it seemed to aid groups that opportunities to provide assistance were disappearing. But MSF believed that opportunities still existed, saying it would negotiate with criminals and even sometimes ignore their wrongdoing, if doing so enabled aid workers to save lives.

The boldest statement of that philosophy appeared last year when MSF published "Humanitarian Negotiations Revealed', a self-exposé disclosing that MSF paid an Al Qaeda-affiliated militia a 810,000- per-project registration fee to continue working in Somalia. And, to remain in Yemen, MSF had to apologize to the government for (deservedly) listing Yemen as one of 2009's top ten humanitarian crises.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the disclosures haven't caused donors to withhold funding or enraged governments, guerrillas and other belligerents. Instead, “it's been very positive,” Weissman says “People understand us better.” If anything, the transparency has helped the group by dispelling suspicion that it has a hidden agenda.

Other aid groups are less shy about advocacy. “We'll be political when other organizations won't,” says Shannon Scribner, humanitarian policy manager for Oxfam America. Still, she adds, her group always weighs the consequences. “Are you saving more lives by staying and not speaking out?” MSF usually stays. In 2009, it returned to Afghanistan by opening one project in a government-controlled area and another in a Taliban stronghold. Both sides tolerated MSF because they claim it demonstrated their concem for local populations. “Independence is a myth,” Weissman says. “Instead, we choose our dependencies. The only independence we have is the independence of mind.”

Source http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/the-big-dilemma-facing-doctors-without-borders-4946758/?page=1