"Since last summer, hundreds of patients have avoided going to public hospitals, " said Bart Janssens, Medecins Sans Frontieres director of operations in Brussels.

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In 2011, an article in the same journal from a team led by the University of Antwerp's Koen Janssens reported that a pigment Van Gogh favoured called chrome yellow degraded when other, chromium-containing pigments were present.

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Police inspector Louis Janssens, 59, and his second cousin Paul Alix, 61 - a retired industrial mechanic - also find it hard to keep their emotions in check when they talk about their grandfathers, orphaned brothers who fought together at the Yser and in Ypres.

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