Oliver Behn

Concerned Citizen | Be A Thorn In The Foot | Director Operations @MSF | My Opinion | Retweet is not an Endorsement

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Last week I was in Nyala, #Darfur. This is the office to coordinate #EPI for 6 million people. No cold chain, no resources. #MSF is the only international health actor present in South Darfur. There is a 25% mortality rate in our paediatric wards. Where is everyone else?

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Evacuation orders by Israel to hospitals in northern Gaza are a death sentence for the sick and injured

#GazaCity #Solidarity #WHO #Palestine

[World Health Organization (WHO) @WHO]

Evacuation orders by Israel to hospitals in northern Gaza are a death sentence for the sick and injured

As the @UN's agency responsible for public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) strongly condemns Israel's repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2000 inpatients in northern Gaza. The forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further worsen the current humanitarian and public health catastrophe.

The lives of many critically ill and fragile patients hang in the balance: those in intensive care or who rely on life support; patients undergoing hemodialysis; newborns in incubators; women with complications of pregnancy, and others all face imminent deterioration of their condition or death if they are forced to move and are cut off from life-saving medical attention while being evacuated.

Health facilities in northern Gaza continue to receive an influx of injured patients and are struggling to operate beyond maximum capacity. Some patients are being treated in corridors and outdoors in surrounding streets due to a lack of hospital beds.

Forcing more than 2000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence.

Hospital directors and health workers are now facing an agonizing choice: abandon critically ill patients amid a bombing campaign, put their own lives at risk while remaining on site to treat patients, or endanger their patients’ lives while attempting to transport them to facilities that have no capacity to receive them.

Overwhelmingly, caregivers have chosen to stay behind and honor their oaths as health professionals to “do no harm,” rather than risk moving their critically ill patients during evacuations. Health workers should never have to make such impossible choices.

Additionally, tens of thousands of displaced people in northern Gaza are seeking refuge in open spaces in or around hospitals, treating them as havens from violence as well as to protect the facilities from potential attacks. Their lives, too, are at risk when health facilities are bombed.

There are verified reports of deaths of health care workers and destruction of health facilities, which denies civilians the basic human right of life-saving health care and is prohibited under International Humanitarian Law.

WHO calls for Israel to immediately reverse evacuation orders to hospitals in northern Gaza, and calls for the protection of health facilities, health workers, patients, and civilians.

WHO also reiterates its calls for the immediate and safe delivery of medical supplies, fuel, clean water, food, and other humanitarian aid into Gaza through the Rafah crossing, where life-saving assistance, including WHO health supplies that arrived earlier today, is currently awaiting entry.

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Two million people get cut off from food, water and medical care. A state gets card blanche to relentlessly bombard a city and its population making a city uninhabitable. It’s outrageous and a collapse of ethics and law. #GazaCity #Palestine #Solidarity

[Barnett R. Rubin @BRRubin]

The current war may spell the end of any credibility the U.S. and West have left to promote or defend human rights and international humanitarian law. It seems they can be suspended for the self-defense of those with whom we feel solidarity at the expense of those we dehumanize.

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Unsafe abortion is a leading cause for maternal mortality. 97% happen in resource limited, unstable and conflict environment. Silence leads to false information, lack of access and ultimately poor health outcomes for women and girls. #InternationalSafeAbortionDay #MSF

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Prelimary results of our survey indicate high levels of retrospective mortality in the #displacedpopulation in #Goma. Main cause of death was violence. High level of disappearances pushing results over emergency thresholds. #MSF #DRC

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

On 26 April, the El Geneina Teaching Hospital, where MSF managed the paediatric and nutrition departments, was also looted with parts of the hospital damaged or destroyed. The hospital remains closed following the attack.  
#Sudan #MSF #SudanConflict #humanitarian #NotATarget

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Incomplete list of incidents affecting MSF in Sudan. This stops direct medical humanitarian action to people.

Between 16 and 20 May MSF warehouse in Khartoum was looted and occupied with medical supplies, fuel and vehicles stolen. Medicines were spoiled.

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

On 11 May, an MSF office in Khartoum was looted with two vehicles stolen.

On 4 May, an MSF office in El Geneina was looted.

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Chad and Guinea still have to find $200,000 t $300,000 a year to receive #Gavi support to roll out #PCV as the last countries in Africa. How is such a delay possible? Costs thousands of children’s lives this year. #GlobalHealth #accesstohealthcare

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

The first international colleagues arrived in #Sudan yesterday to join the Sudanese and international team that stayed behind. They start a complicated emergency response. #MSF #SudanCrisis #SudanConflict #HumanitarianAid #khartoum

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

You don’t let people drown. Basta! @IuventaCrew #solidarity #searchandrescue #geobarents

[iuventa-crew @IuventaCrew]

It is possible.
It is necessary.
It is the only right thing to do. Everything else is wrong.

Watch the video with our statement, presented in court today and read our latest press release (next tweet)

#SolidarityAndResistance

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

UAE oil company employees given roles in office hosting #Cop28. The credibility of the event is challenged before the start. #civilsociety needs to question endorsement and participation. We know they know everything - they don’t want to change. https://t.co/ffhrdueWW4

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

#searchandrescue #GeoBarents #Mediterranean

[Radical Graffiti @GraffitiRadical]

"The enemy doesn't arrive by boat, he arrives by limousine"

Sticker spotted in Dublin, Ireland

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

It seems this practice has not stopped.

[Lighthouse Reports @LHreports]

While tourists on ferries are sipping from their sundowners, people - including children - are chained & locked up below decks in dark places

@LHreports & partners has investigated illegal returns of refugees by Italy to Greece

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

@piersmorgan @ManUtd @Cristiano Stereotyping and ridiculing names and nations is not funny but allows xenophobia to thrive. @piersmorgan

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

Today - the ambulance have broken down, the PHCUs are empty, the food in the hospitals is running out and yet palaces in Freetown grow. The people are again forgotten, neglected and exploited. #WHO #globalhealth #epidemic #MSF

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

The palaces grow and the shelves are empty.

Driving through #Freetown and up country many thoughts, dozens of pictures and memories race through my mind. Places, events and all the people who came to work together with our colleagues from Sierra Leone. #Ebola hunters! 1/4

[Oliver Behn @oliver_behn]

There was suffering from so many sierra Leonians - colleagues, friends, health workers and all those not known in the villages and poorer parts of Freetown. But we also were determined, laughed, learned and achieved so much together.
3/4