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Acts or threats of violence perpetrated against medical personnel, patients, facilities and transports that hinder the provision of medical care, contravene the rules and fundamental principles of international humanitarian law when carried out in situations of armed conflict. However, as recent targeting of health workers in Turkey, Pakistan and Bahrain illustrate, there are many situations of political volatility where humanitarian law does not apply.

In Syria, doctors have fled in droves, fearful of adding to the casualties in the country’s bloody civil war. In Pakistan, vaccinators are gunned down by militants. In Bahrain, physicians who treat protesters are thrown in jail. Despite universally recognized international law protecting medical workers in conflict situations, increasingly, the people on the front line of health care are becoming targets. At a side event of the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva today, speakers from Turkey, Bahrain, and Pakistan described attacks on healthcare workers for providing care to politically unpopular groups, or because the workers witnessed human rights violations. Other recent attacks have targeted vaccination teams and ambulances.

For Dr. Qasem al Zein, the revolution began with a feeling of hope. “Even before the Syrian revolution, in the beginning of the Arab Spring, I was happy and wished it would reach us,” he told filmmaker Amal Saloum. “The Syrian people suffered oppression and tyranny more than any other people in the world. So I expected the people to take to the streets.” Saloum filmed Dr. Qasem at work in the city of Al Qusair, several months before the long siege that has brought it back under the control of the government in recent weeks.

We at IntraHealth are keeping those who were injured and affected by the bombings at Monday’s Boston Marathon in our thoughts this week. The act of cruelty took three lives and inflicted gruesome, life-changing injuries on many others. Some athletes who were in top condition just a few days ago will never run again. But many are alive today because of the doctors, surgeons, and nurses who were ready and able to treat their injuries as soon as they rolled in the door.

The cold-blooded and premeditated murder of 8 public health workers in Pakistan this week once again brings attention to an issue that is not being adequately addressed: the protection of health care practitioners and allied workers, of health systems’ infrastructure and services, and of health service beneficiaries. Attacks on health care workers, health facilities/services and beneficiaries violate international humanitarian and human rights law. The consequences of such attacks extend beyond the immediate victims: the beneficiaries of the health services, primarily children and their mothers, suffer the effects of the preventable illnesses that occur as a result of the interruption in much-needed health services.