Healthcare in Afghanistan: ‘doctors are threatened at gunpoint, even by civilians’

(The Guardian)  – It’s dangerous to be a doctor in Afghanistan. This is what the staff deal with most days at a hospital in the country’s north-west: physical attacks by patients’ relatives; gun-wielding soldiers inside the wards; and verbal assaults and threats of bodily harm against doctors and nurses who are only trying to help. An Afghan surgeon I’ve met keeps a gun at home for protection, and I understand why. Assailants recently attacked two female nurses, causing cervical spine injuries. Another nurse responding to a mass casualty event arrived at the hospital to be assaulted and choked by relatives of a wounded patient who were demanding immediate service.

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