Attacks on Health

War, by its very nature, is expected to cause injuries and deaths. But in Syria, human rights groups and others with first-hand knowledge about the conflict there say the extent of mass killings, torture, and other atrocities associated with the 2-year civil war has reached horrific levels. Among the 23 million residents of Syria, nearly 93 000 had been killed as of June and nearly 5 million have fled their homes, some to nearby countries.

Volunteers, who are paid a nominal honorarium for participating in the polio vaccination campaigns, find themselves in a vulnerable position in case of violence against them. The health department officials told Dawn that a woman volunteer developed cardiac problems and remained in hospital for a month after a policeman escorting her during a vaccination campaign in Mardan was targeted by gunmen. They said the woman hadn’t received any assistance from the government and was left at the mercy of Allah.

The death toll in Syria’s ongoing civil war may now be as high as 100,000. As the violence mounts, another emergency is looming: a public health crisis across the region. That’s the conclusion of a new study published by the British medical journal The Lancet. Syria’s health care system is near collapse. Outbreaks of disease are on the rise in the country, and refugees sheltered beyond the border are also at great risk.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UNICEF, and WHO, with support from the Office of Foreign Disaster Control, trained 50 staff from Syrian and Jordanian ministries of health and other organisations working in and around Syria in May, 2013, in Jordan. A third of Syria’s 21 million people are now displaced from their homes. Most of the north of Syria is rebel-held territory and local administration is no longer directed by the national administration. Patients have flooded into several hospitals in neighbouring countries, where Islamic charities are subsidising care.

The Erdoğan government’s use of force in a clampdown on protesters over the weekend has precipitated a deepening human rights and political crisis in Turkey. Human Rights Watch documented a huge wave of arbitrary detentions and police attacks on people who were on hospital premises, as well as on a hospital itself and on makeshift health clinics. With the trade union confederations declaring a strike on June 17, 2013, there were signs of further clampdown on demonstrations in the evening.