 2024 began with fresh Israeli atrocities on the people of Gaza as the offensive continued unabated. What is the latest from this battlefield? A study by Public Services International throws light on the mental health issues faced by healthcare professionals. What does this report say? This is the Daily Debrief. These are your stories for the day and before we go any further, please hit that subscribe button if you're watching this on YouTube. The death toll in Gaza has crossed 22,000 as the genocidal Israeli offensive continues unabated in the 24 hours after Tuesday afternoon over 200 people were killed. This is in addition to Israeli atrocities in the West Bank. Meanwhile, the offensive also continues to have regional implications with tensions on the rise in Syria, Yemen and other parts of West Asia. We go to Abdul for the details. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us the year beginning with of course Israeli attacks continuing scores of in fact I think the number is over 200 people killed in just one day alone. Could you give us an update of what is happening on the ground with respect to the offensive? Well, as per the latest reports, the overall number of Palestinians killed in the in the Israeli attack since October 7 has crossed almost 22,000 people. The number of Palestinians injured, of course, is touching 58,000 and you rightly pointed out that in last 24 hours at least 200 more Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli attacks. As per the latest reports, Israeli ground offensive is ongoing in Khanionist. They have asked the residents of Khanionist to evacuate and basically relocate into a small territory which is considered to be even smaller than an average airport where around two million, sorry, around one point around 18, 1.8 million people are basically forced to live as per the latest data. Then there are reports that the Israeli ground forces, a part of them have withdrawn from the northern Gaza, which basically has prompted a large number of Palestinians who have been displaced to move back to their territories. We do not know whether this movement is temporary because Israeli withdrawal might be a tactical move, the forces may come back, but for the while people are so desperate to move back to whatever their houses are left to those places and try to kind of begin living in quote unquote whatever normal is there. Apart from that, there are also reports in different parts of Gaza that how the repeated bombing in different particularly the refugee areas has basically led to further displacement of the people. So overall offensive inside the Gaza Israeli offensive continues despite the tactical withdrawal from here and there, despite the talks about exchange of prisoners. As per the latest report, Israel has rejected an offer put forward by the Palestinian resistance groups of ceasefire in return of the release of all the hostages and it seems that Israel will continue to attack Gaza for because as per the statement given by Israeli officials on Monday that they were claiming that the attack will continue for months to come. So this is the overall situation. If you see, this has also led to worsening humanitarian situation as well. There were videos coming from the reason which basically shows how a large number of Palestinians are in a very desperate situation and therefore they are running behind the trucks, whatever limited aid is reaching the reason there is a desperation all over Gaza. And I will also, could you maybe take us through what's being at the regional and international basis in terms of the responses in terms of mass mobilizations as well. If you just expand a go out of Gaza and see that there is a continued Israeli attack inside West Bank on Monday, there were five Palestinians killed. Then there were raids going on in different parts of occupied West Bank. Then of course, Israeli forces have repeatedly targeted southern Lebanon and more and more there are reports coming that there are scores of people in Lebanon have also been killed in those attacks. Then on Monday, there was a report from Sanaa, the Syrian Arabic New Agency, which basically said that there were bombings inside Damascus, the capital. This was another, of course, there are thousands of attacks, which is carried out since 2011. But this is particularly in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza. Of course, the most significant development as terms of regional aspect is concerned that there are reports coming that on Tuesday afternoon, there was an attack on another US base in Iraq. There are not yet, the number of casualties and other things is not yet there, are not yet there. But of course, it basically signifies that the attack on the US base is all across the region has not stopped. In fact, they have increased and particularly because US is seen as the main facilitator of the genocide in Gaza. Apart from that, on Sunday, there was an attack on the Houthi boats, three of them were sank basically by the US Navy, in which 10 Houthi soldiers were killed. And that led to kind of suspension, temporary suspension of whatever operation the shipping company had started following the US assurances. There was a suspension of operation for a while. And it seems that the Houthis have basically again reiterated that they will continue to attack the ships which are heading to Israel, no matter how much US is basically trying to pressurize and trying to attack their just cause for Palestinian liberation. There is another major development which need to be noted, whether we are not sure what would be the implication, but there was a report that the Israeli, sorry, Iranian destroyer has reached the Red Sea on Monday. And this may be a routine operation, but this given the context of attacks on Houthi vessels and the attack on Israeli, sorry, Iranian officials inside Syria. In fact, Musavi was killed on Christmas Day. So given the context and given the larger momentum which is in and around the war, Israeli war and Gaza, this can have other meanings as well. But this is too early to say anything, sure, concrete about it at this moment. Thank you so much, Abdul for the update. Healthcare professionals have been facing exceptional levels of stress over the past few years, especially due to the COVID pandemic. A new study by Public Services International tries to analyze the crisis of mental health in this sector and the structural reasons for it. It is important to note that the crisis did not begin with the pandemic. Decades of underfunding and neoliberal policies played a huge role. The study analyzes conditions in a number of countries, including Canada, Brazil, Liberia, etc. For more details, we have Anna Brichard. Anna, thank you so much for joining us. A very important issue that's often not much attention is paid to it, often the mental health of healthcare professionals. It's been a very, very difficult set of years for many of these professionals, not just with COVID, but even in the aftermath. And now we even have a fresh variant of COVID as well. So could you maybe take us through what the studies in general, what are its overall conclusions? Well, it starts from the premise that COVID-19, of course, made the situation much worse. So we know that even before the pandemic started, health workers were struggling with both physical and mental health problems because of the work conditions that they have to endure every day. And so the premise of this research done by Public Services International is that the pandemic, because of all the accumulated load that we have from years before, essentially made things implode and that it should be taken into consideration that it had to be addressed urgently if we don't want to lose the health workers that we have and also to be able to essentially rebuild the health workforce that we need. Of course, the global issue that we have in the health workforce numbers is, well, it's global, so it affects everyone. The study does show that. So it looks at Sweden, it looks at Australia, at Canada, but it also looks at Brazil and Liberia, which kind of tries to show the differences that we do have between the high-income countries and the low- and middle-income countries. But what they all share, of course, is that the conditions that health workers are facing today are essentially caused by the years of neoliberal policies that we have seen implemented by the pressures of the IMF, of other financial institutions. And it essentially shows that the landscape that has been formed depends on much more than just the national, the local context, and has to be dealt with also at different levels. For example, it also brings good examples of how trade unions have been essentially successful in addressing some of the smaller issues that they have seen. And this is particularly true in the high-income countries that I've mentioned before. Of course, the trade union actions are not enough to address the whole problem, because they're not able, for example, to point out and to counter the fact that high-income countries are trying to resolve their health workforce shortages by recruiting from abroad, by recruiting from countries who have even less health workers. But it does show that a strong trade union presence makes a difference when we talk about health workers and their health. Rana, interesting thing about the studies. Like you said, how it covers various kinds of countries. And I think we'd like to talk about two examples today. Let's first take Brazil, which is one of the countries that has been studied. What are the conclusions from Brazil? Well, essentially Brazil, what Brazil has gone through the health system in Brazil, especially since Temer and Bolsonaro took office, is that there was a deterioration of work conditions in the healthcare sector. So what the study shows is something that health activists in Brazil have also been warning about for a very long time, is that the loss of social security that we have seen, the reforms of labour policies that have reduced workers' rights, the overlooking of the needs of health workers, and particularly nurses who are one of the biggest groups in Brazil's health system, have led to worsening health among health workers. And again, nurses are one of the biggest groups that have been affected by this. Many of them, including during the pandemic, they have been forced to work multiple jobs, to make ends meet. They have not had access to adequate PPE, so protective equipment. Essentially what they have seen is rising levels of anxiety, of depression, of sleep issues, even of burnout. So what the situation is now is that there has been a very important step forward when the national minimum wage for nurses was voted into practice. But for now, it is still problematic to see how this measure will be implemented fully, because we know that there have been mobilisations in the private sector of employers who do not want to see this implemented. And by this, they are again making a gross disservice to the nurses' mental and physical health. And moving across to another continent where many of these issues prevail, Liberia is a country that has been studied. So could you maybe tell us a bit about that also? Well, in Liberia, again, we are talking about a very specific context, because the health system has been weakened by different things. And even if we look only at the year starting from 2013, we know that Ebola has had a gross impact on how health has looked in Liberia. Now, what's interesting to see is that, you know, Ebola essentially has been a practical example and a lesson for Liberia to organise the COVID-19 response. But on the other hand, Liberia has so few health workers that this has meant that those few who have been working in the local health system had to be redistributed to COVID-19 services. This, of course, takes a toll. And then, of course, it doesn't help that many of the people who are working in Liberia are forced to emigrate because the work conditions are so bad. And then again, what's very interesting for me in this part of the study is that it shows that it's not just about Liberia's government, it's not about Liberia's government making the wrong decisions, it's not about something that's very local. It has very much to do with how the IMF is approaching Liberia and how it's forcing it to orient its health system to on a volunteer basis, discrediting the health workers that are there and essentially not giving them a chance to build a strong health system which would benefit all. Thank you so much for that update. That's all we have in this episode of Daily Debrief. 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