Russian attacks hit at least 9 Ukrainian medical facilities, visual evidence shows

Russian attacks hit at least 9 Ukrainian medical facilities, visual evidence shows

The maternity hospital was one of many health-care facilities hit amid Russia’s siege on key Ukrainian cities since the nation’s invasion in late February, a new Washington Post analysis reveals.

To confirm which hospitals have been damaged, The Post examined more than 500 videos and photos, reviewed social media posts from the hospitals, spoke to witnesses and hospital employees, and compared key details from these incidents to reports from Ukrainian officials, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, Human Rights Watch, the Center for Information Resilience and ACLED, a group that monitors armed conflict around the world.

The Post’s visual analysis verified nine incidents, including the strike in Mariupol, where hospitals faced direct damage as a result of a reported Russian attack. There were fatalities in at least three of the incidents verified by The Post, according to officials. Three of the facilities specifically served women or children.


Medical facilities hit by Russian attacks

Separatist-

controlled

area

Crimea

Annexed by Russia

in 2014

Control areas as of March 10

Medical facilities hit by Russian attacks

Separatist-

controlled

area

Crimea

Annexed by Russia

in 2014

Control areas as of March 10

Medical facilities are considered “protected objects” under the law unless they are used for military purposes, said Priyanka Motaparthy, director of the Counterterrorism, Armed Conflict and Human Rights Project at Columbia University Law School’s Human Rights Institute. “When you are hitting in the hospital, you’re not only risking killing people who are receiving medical care, who are sick and wounded, but also because of the long-term effects on a civilian population,” she said. Motaparthy added that the opposing party should give warning if possible before it attacks.

International law experts who reviewed The Post’s findings said they appear to show evidence that Russian forces have violated these laws. In at least one case, a pro-Russian media outlet has claimed that a hospital damaged in Ukraine was used for military purposes. The Post found no evidence to support this claim. Motaparthy said an investigation into the incidents should consider any statement the Russian military gave for why it struck the hospital, but hospitals are presumed to be civilian.

In one of the deadliest incidents The Post reviewed, Russian forces fired a ballistic missile carrying a cluster munition, which hit the Central City Hospital in Vuhledar, a town in the separatist Donetsk region on Feb. 24, according to visuals obtained and analyzed in a report by Human Rights Watch. The munition hit just outside the hospital, killing four and injuring 10 civilians, six of whom were health-care workers. Human Rights Watch confirmed the events by speaking to a doctor and official from the hospital and verifying photos posted to social media and sent directly by hospital staff. The Post confirmed the geolocation of the photo of damage to the hospital by comparing it to available source imagery on Google Earth, and the incident was also reported by ACLED. The World Health Organization, which

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More than 10,000 patients caught Covid-19 in a hospital, analysis shows. They never made it out

More than 10,000 patients caught Covid-19 in a hospital, analysis shows. They never made it out

They left with covid-19 — if they left at all.

More than 10,000 patients were diagnosed with covid in a U.S. hospital last year after they were admitted for something else, according to federal and state records analyzed exclusively for KHN. The number is certainly an undercount, since it includes mostly patients 65 and older, plus California and Florida patients of all ages.

Yet in the scheme of things that can go wrong in a hospital, it is catastrophic: About 21% of the patients who contracted covid in the hospital from April to September last year died, the data shows. In contrast, nearly 8% of other Medicare patients died in the hospital at the time.

Steven Johnson, 66, was expecting to get an infection cut out of his hip flesh and bone at Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, Florida, last November. The retired pharmacist had survived colon cancer and was meticulous to avoid contracting covid. He could not have known that, from April through September, 8% of that hospital’s Medicare covid patients were diagnosed with the virus after they were admitted for another concern.

Johnson had tested negative for covid two days before he was admitted. After 13 days in the hospital, he tested positive, said his wife, Cindy Johnson, also a retired pharmacist.

Soon he was struggling to clear a glue-like phlegm from his lungs. A medical team could hardly control his pain. They prompted Cindy to share his final wishes. She asked: “Honey, do you want to be intubated?” He responded with an emphatic “no.” He died three days later.

After her husband tested positive, Cindy Johnson, trained in contact tracing, quickly got a covid test. She tested negative. Then she thought about the large number of hospital staffers flowing into and out of his room — where he was often unmasked — and suspected a staff member had infected him. That the hospital, part of the HCA Healthcare chain, still has not mandated staff vaccinations is “appalling,” she said.

“I’m furious,” she said.

“How can they say on their website,” she asked, “that the safety precautions ‘we’ve put into place make our facilities among the safest possible places to receive healthcare at this time’?”

Blake Medical Center spokesperson Lisa Kirkland said the hospital is “strongly encouraging vaccination” and noted that it follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and federal and state guidelines to protect patients. President Joe Biden has called for all hospital employees to be vaccinated, but the requirement could face resistance in a dozen states, including Florida, that have banned vaccine mandates.
Cindy Johnson holds a pillow made from a shirt her husband, Steven, used to wear. Steven died of covid-19 in December 2020, and Cindy believes he contracted the virus at Blake Medical Center in Bradenton, Florida, where he was admitted for an infection in his hip. (Eve Edelheit for KHN)
Overall, the rate of in-hospital spread among Medicare and other patients was lower than in other countries, including the United Kingdom, which makes such data public and openly discusses it. On average, about 1.7% of U.S. hospitalized covid patients were diagnosed with the virus in U.S. hospitals, according to an analysis of Medicare records from April 1 to Sept. 30, 2020, provided by Dr. James Kennedy, founder of CDIMD, a Nashville-based
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Falling asleep at this time may be safest for your heart, new study shows

Falling asleep at this time may be safest for your heart, new study shows

The time you go to mattress could impact your chance for heart disorder. In reality, scientists say, there is a heart wellbeing sweet location for falling asleep: from 10 to 11 p.m.

An investigation of knowledge from additional than 88,000 older people tracked for around six decades exposed a 12 percent higher risk between those people who dropped off from 11 to 11:59 p.m. and a 25 per cent bigger hazard of producing cardiovascular ailment among the persons who fell asleep at midnight or later on. Slipping asleep before than 10 p.m. was affiliated with a 24 per cent maximize in risk, according to a report revealed Monday in the European Heart Journal—Digital Overall health.

“The overall body has a 24-hour inside clock, termed circadian rhythm, that assists regulate physical and mental performing,” neuroscientist David Strategies, co-writer of the examine and head of study at Huma, a London well being tech company that supports decentralized scientific trials, claimed in a assertion.

“While we can not conclude causation from our study, the effects propose that early or late bedtimes could be a lot more likely to disrupt the physique clock, with adverse repercussions for cardiovascular overall health,” mentioned Options, who is also a senior lecturer in organizational neuroscience at the College of Exeter in the U.K. Huma typically clears its reports by means of the ethics committee at the College of Exeter.  

To explore how diverse bedtimes may well affect coronary heart health and fitness, Strategies and colleagues at Huma, turned to United kingdom Biobank, a biomedical databases. United kingdom Biobank maintains data about extra than 500,000 volunteers ages 37 to 73 who were recruited from 2006 to 2010 and delivered Huma researchers information about their demographics, life and health. Their bodily health and fitness was also assessed.

The researchers centered on 88,926 grownups, typical age 61, who wore accelerometers (units that history when a person moves) on their wrists for seven days. With the accelerometer information, the scientists identified the occasions of slumber onset and waking.

For the duration of an normal adhere to-up period of 5.7 many years, 3,172 of the volunteers (3.6 per cent) professional cardiovascular situations, this sort of as strokes, coronary heart assaults or heart failure — incidents were being best among men and women with slumber situations at midnight or later on and most affordable between all those who fell asleep from 10 to 10:59 p.m.

Even when a selection of components have been taken into account — together with age, gender, snooze length, slumber irregularity, staying an early chicken or a night owl, cigarette smoking standing, body-mass index, diabetes, blood tension, cholesterol degrees and socioeconomic standing — falling asleep regularly at midnight or later was continue to connected to the best increased possibility of heart sickness.

The amplified risk was much more pronounced in women of all ages who fell asleep later on. Adult males had been at larger coronary heart possibility only when they fell asleep previously in the evening, right before 10

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