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Hospitals

We Need A Care System That Treats Patients With Dignity

Earlier this year, I lost my dad to complications from diabetes. He was first admitted to the hospital two days before Thanksgiving of last year. Over the course of the next nine months, he suffered through 15 surgeries and 14 hospital stays.  In between those stays, he was shuffled between skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, and board and care homes. While watching my dad’s decline in health, I learned the differences of what those terms  meant in real-time as my family and I tried to navigate a complicated, and oftentimes unforgiving, health care system. All in all, he went to four separate hospitals and six outpatient facilities to receive his so-called “care.” 

Israel’s Genocide Day 388: Ongoing Israeli Assault In Northern Gaza

The last functioning hospital in northern Gaza has officially stopped functioning after Israeli forces raided it over the weekend, arresting all but two of its medical staff and damaging parts of the hospital premises. On Saturday, Israeli forces began to raid the hospital, ordering patients and medical staff to leave its wings and descend to the courtyard. Israeli soldiers then separated the men from the women and arrested dozens of Palestinians, including all of the hospital’s staff except one nurse and the hospital’s Director, Dr. Husam Abu Safiyeh.

Medical Staff Refusing To Evacuate Central Gaza’s Last Functioning Hospital

On August 21, the Israeli army ordered different areas in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, to evacuate their homes and newly-erected tents. This was the first step in the army’s invasion and campaign of destruction in Deir al-Balah, the last town that has not been completely leveled throughout the war. One of the blocks ordered to evacuate included the last fully operational hospital in central and southern Gaza, the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Affiliated with the Palestinian Authority, the governmental hospital has been working at four times its capacity, hosting over 700 patients.

A Coastal Revolution In Hospital Food

As executive chef and director of traditional foods at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage, Amy Foote brightens patient menus with healthy Indigenous foods, including moose, salmon, fiddleheads and more. “Traditional foods connect patients to their land and culture, which can help with healing,” says Foote amid the clattering pans and hissing pipes of the hospital’s large kitchen. Incorporating traditional foods is no small task for a hospital serving over 5,000 meals daily to patients and their visiting families. But the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which runs the hospital, is investing in the cause. As part of that, says Foote, its food service recently went “self-op,” meaning it no longer contracts out.

Half Of Rural Hospitals Are Operating At A Loss

In a little more than two years as CEO of a small hospital in Wyoming, Dave Ryerse has witnessed firsthand the worsening financial problems eroding rural hospitals nationwide. In 2022, Ryerse’s South Lincoln Medical Center was forced to shutter its operating room because it didn’t have the staff to run it 24 hours a day. Soon after, the obstetrics unit closed. Ryerse said the publicly owned facility’s revenue from providing care has fallen short of operating expenses for at least the past eight years, driving tough decisions to cut services in hopes of keeping the facility open in Kemmerer, a town of about 2,400 in southwestern Wyoming.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 178: Israel Withdraws From Hospital

The Palestinian health ministry reported that Israeli forces committed 14 massacres across the Gaza Strip since Saturday, killing 140 Palestinians and wounding 202, raising the death toll of Israel’s assault since October 7 to 32,782 with more than 75,392 wounded. In Gaza City, medical sources reported finding at least 50 dead bodies in the surroundings of al-Shifa hospital after the Israeli army withdrew from the medical complex following two weeks of raids. The health ministry said in a statement on Sunday that medical staff are unable to recover the bodies and the wounded under the rubble.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 174: Israel Killed 200 Palestinians In Siege Of Al-Shifa Hospital

The Palestinian health ministry announced in a statement early on Thursday that Israeli forces killed at least 62 Palestinians and wounded 91 in the last 24 hours. The ministry said during this time that Israeli forces committed six massacres across the Gaza Strip. In Gaza City, Israeli bombings targeted two family houses in the vicinity of al-Shifa Hospital, killing 28 Palestinians. In the Shujaiyah neighborhood, east of Gaza, Israeli bombings killed three Palestinians. In the al-Zaitoun neighborhood in Gaza City, Israeli strikes on aid distribution volunteers killed four Palestinians

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 173: Israel Continues Attacking Hospitals

The Palestinian health ministry in Gaza announced that 76 Palestinians were killed and 12 were wounded in Israeli bombings in different parts of the Gaza Strip, raising the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in the coastal enclave ever since October 7 to 32,490. In Khan Younis, Israeli forces killed 12 Palestinians in airstrikes in the Mawasi area. According to local sources, children were among the casualties. In Rafah, nine Palestinians were killed in Israeli bombings on Khirbet al-Aadas, north of the city. More Israeli bombings targeted two family homes in the center and south of Rafah.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 172: Israel Continues Raids On Hospitals

The UN Security Council passed a resolution on Monday calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, almost six months after Israel’s assault on the Strip began.   The resolution was adopted after the U.S. abstained, in a marked shift from its previous positions, where it had vetoed three ceasefire resolution attempts in the past months. Last week, Russia and China vetoed a proposed ceasefire resolution presented by the U.S. The resolution called for the unconditional release of the remaining Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip as a precondition for the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 171: ‘Horrific’ Eyewitness Accounts

The Israeli military has imposed ongoing sieges on at least three medical facilities in the besieged enclave, terrorizing, injuring, and killing thousands of civilians in the process.  Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza has entered its seventh day under siege, and the civilians able to flee are reporting ruthless massacres in and around the medical complex.  A teenage Palestinian boy, Farouk Mohammed Hamd, told Al Jazeera he witnessed Israeli soldiers executing a group of eight people, including his father and brother, inside al-Shifa Hospital.

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 170: Israel Assaults Three Hospitals

Gaza’s two major hospitals were under attack on Sunday morning as thousands of Palestinians in the coastal enclave have been living under bombardment for the past 170 days. Overnight, Israeli forces committed eight massacres in various areas of the Gaza Strip, according to the Ministry of Health on Telegram, killing at least 84 people and injuring 106. Thousands remain under the rubble of bombed buildings. Israeli forces shelled and bombed the vicinity of al-Amal Hospital in Khan Younis, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS).

‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 141: Israel Attacks Civilian Shelter

An Israeli airstrike just hit Rafah, killing seven people, showing that even Rafah, where the majority of displaced Palestinians are sheltering, is no longer safe. The attack comes following a bloody night where Israeli forces attacked a building in Deir el-Balah, where more than 120 people were sheltering. At least 24 Palestinians were killed in the attacks, the majority of whom were women and children. “You can see for yourself the bodies. All the dead were women and children. There is no peaceful place for us to go. We were all displaced, we’ve all lost our homes. Where do you want us to go?

Casualties Of A Failed Health Care System

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend found herself in the emergency room at one of our world-class hospitals, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. After emergency surgery, the medical team decided to admit her for at least another day to monitor her recovery. What she encountered next was something out of a makeshift battlefield hospital, as rendered by Hieronymus Bosch. There were no beds available in the patient rooms, so “admitted” patients were being stashed in beds laid end to end in the emergency area. A bit of delay getting a bed is not unusual. But in this case, there were seriously ill admitted patients in 73 beds crammed into the emergency area.

The Silence Of The Damned

There is no effective health care system left in Gaza. Infants are dying. Children are having their limbs amputated without anesthesia. Thousands of cancer patients and those in need of dialysis lack treatment. The last cancer hospital in Gaza has ceased functioning. An estimated 50,000 pregnant women have no safe place to give birth. They undergo cesarean sections without anesthesia. Miscarriage rates are up 300 percent since the Israeli assault began. The wounded bleed to death. There is no sanitation or clean water. Hospitals have been bombed and shelled. Nasser Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in Gaza, is “near collapse.”

Massachusetts Wakes Up To A Hospital Nightmare

The group of fresh medical school grads knew something wasn’t right with Steward Health Care when they showed up in Dorchester, Massachusetts to start their residencies in Carney Hospital’s inaugural family medicine residency class during the summer of 2014 and learned the president who had recruited them had already been fired. Soon afterward, a Steward administrator admitted the new family medicine clinic and the pediatric ward they had toured on their recruitment visit were never actually opening, and that the nearby hospital at which residents were supposed to learn how to deliver babies was being shuttered entirely.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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