The horrific cost of armed conflict for individuals, families, communities and nation states cannot be underestimated. According to some estimates, over 90 per cent of the victims of armed conflict are civilians. The catastrophic sophistication of modern weaponry has rendered our global village a potentially very dangerous place. We are all potential victims, regardless where the conflict begins.
The physical costs are easiest to see: the loss of life, limbs, and other horrible, disfiguring injuries. Less visible, but no less damaging, are other kinds of loss, children abruptly orphaned, mothers frantically searching for missing infants, entire villages simply disappearing from the map. And how do we begin to assess the loss experienced by adolescents who know how to use an assault weapon – and kill - even before they fully realize the meaning of life?
There is no health determinant as fundamental as peace. In itself, peace will not ensure health. But, in this era of supremely destructive weapons, if armed conflict erupts in any neighbourhood, other determinants of health fade into the background.
Armed conflict is a health issue. Nurses are at the centre of every armed conflict dealing with the consquences of conflict. This section documents the on-going role of nurses, often putting their own lives at risk, to deal with the wounded.
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Nissrin Muhammad, 36, sees death every day and worries how her children would survive if she were killed. The only means this widowed mother-of-five has to support her family is to continue working in the dangerous and deteriorating conditions of a public hospital in the capital, Baghdad.
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A Libyan organisation, the Kadhafi Foundation, headed by Saif Al Islam, son of the Libyan
leader Moamer Kadhafi, is reported to have said that the saga of AIDS-affected children
and the Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian medical doctor may soon be resolved.
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A Tripoli Criminal Court in Libya has acquitted five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor on charges of slander.
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Families of Libyan children infected with AIDS said on Thursday they had reached
an agreement with Britain's outgoing Prime Minister Tony Blair which
could save five Bulgarians and a Palestinian doctor from the death
sentence and bring medical help to the sick infants. A solution could be reached before the end
of June.
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A Libyan official has said that the death sentences on foreign medics convicted of
infecting Libyan children with HIV have been commuted to life in
prison. Libya's High Judicial Council is expected to confirm the new sentences.
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