On April 24 Foreign Affairs published an article by Leonard S. Rubenstein, “Unhealthy Practice: Medical Work in Conflict Zones Is Compromised.”
For the second time in less than six months, Rubenstein writes, polio vaccine workers in Pakistan have come under fire. For the gunmen, killing health workers has been seen as a legitimate response to a nefarious extension of Western power. For the CIA, faux vaccine campaigns have sometimes been justified as part of the war on terror. Both sides are wrong, he says: denying or providing health care should never be an instrument of statecraft.
The full article is available on the Foreign Affairs website:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139344/leonard-s-rubenstein/unhealthy-practice
Leonard S. Rubenstein is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and chair of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition.