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A visiting Red Cross surgeon has warned that health care workers need additional security in conflict zones, adding that the lack of protection is one of the biggest issues facing health care today. Dr Robin Coupland said governments, armed forces and the health care community must do more to make health care delivery safer around the world. Last year health personnel suffered more than 1,800 violent incidents. He said this in turn had a devastating effect on populations needing urgent health care.

Dr. Annie Sparrow speaks about the ongoing attrition and targeting of Syria’s doctors. Syria once had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world. But as the war wears on, millions of civilians find themselves in desperate need of medical care.

“Working in a field hospital is like death,” a surgeon told us two weeks ago in Turkey, where more than two dozen Syrian doctors and other health workers had come for training. As if treating victims of the Syrian Army’s weapon of choice, the barrel bomb, wasn’t enough, they themselves were often victims of those same terrible devices.

The ICRC has observed an increased number of attacks on medical personnel in Afghanistan in the past few months. Civilians have been prevented from reaching health facilities during the fighting. "We are concerned by the effects the increased fighting in the summer had on civilians and medical services," said Anthony Dalziel, the ICRC's head of operations for South Asia. "In a volatile environment such as the one in Afghanistan, it is especially important that people providing or receiving medical attention be spared at all times."

The destruction of health services in Gaza is particularly alarming for women. The largest medical center suffered serious damage from attacks and medical workers fear that the closure of the hospital’s maternal health services for high-risk pregnancies will impact fetal and maternal morbidity and mortality rates.