Bahrain's hospital of ghosts

Bahrainis with protest-related injuries are reportedly being kept away from family in a hospital guarded by soldiers.

By Shenaz Kermalli
Al-Jazeera

"Salmaniya Medical Complex, once one of the most renowned medical facilities in the Gulf and a jewel in the crown of Bahrain's public healthcare system, has been transformed into a virtual ghost town. Its gates and front entrance are barricaded with checkpoints and masked military officers, armed with rifles. Its emergency room, once the busiest in the country, is empty. And, according to eyewitness reports collected by Human Rights Watch, hospital staff say security and military forces have sought out and threatened, beaten and detained patients with protest-related injuries. These patients are then systematically segregated from the rest of the patient population and transferred to the sixth floor, where they are virtually inaccessible to anyone, including family. "There are more military officers in the hospital than patients," says Faraz Sanei, a Human Rights Watch observer who has recently been inside Salmaniya. "It is not a normal environment or safe haven for patients. Patients and staff have told us there's a security lockdown and doctors from there are very frightened to speak. "The fact that it's empty means there's not much of an inflow of patients going in. People don't want to go there because they're afraid," he adds. Saeed, a member of a Bahraini political society, has taken more than 100 patients with protest-related injuries to hospital and says that government intervention in hospitals was previously unheard of. "Salmaniya has been besieged by the army," he says. "When we take patients, and if they have a bullet or pellet in their body, they put them directly in emergency and operate. After the operation the patient is taken to the sixth floor. No one is allowed to come see them. Even the hospital employees on the sixth floor - the doctors, the nurses and the people bringing food from the kitchen - have been replaced with military staff."....."