Attacks

Pretoria/Geneva (ICRC) – Community acceptance, provision of impartial treatment and psychosocial support for medical staff working under stress can all play key roles in making health-care facilities more secure amid armed conflict or other emergencies. These are some of the recommendations that emerged from a workshop that took place in Pretoria, South Africa, this week as part of the “Health Care in Danger” project on the dangers facing health-care services.

New shots are jeopardizing humanity’s battle to eradicate polio, and they don't include syringes or vaccines. Rather, they’re the gunshots of Islamic terrorists. The fight to eliminate polio is now imperiled, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), by “insecurity, targeted attacks on health workers and/or a ban by local authorities on polio immunization,” and violence in the Middle East. In a March 2014 report, the organization warned that the virus, which existed in only three countries at the dawn of 2012, is now returning to places from which it had been eradicated, and “risk of further international spread remains high, particularly in central Africa (especially from Cameroon), the Middle East, and the Horn of Africa.”

The severe lack of medical supplies in Syria has been well documented by both the media and humanitarian and human rights groups. Humanitarian missions are blocked, supply trucks are targeted for attack, and those attempting to move critical medical supplies into Syria put their lives at risk. There are insufficient supplies of nearly everything needed by doctors and their patients – everything except laughter.

World Health & Population is seeking submissions of original manuscripts for a theme issue on the nature and impacts of attacks on health workers in conflict zones, to be published in Fall 2014. The issue’s guest editors are Leonard S. Rubenstein and Katherine Footer of the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Joseph Amon of Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Council this afternoon held a panel discussion on the importance of the promotion and protection of civil society space. The discussion included a video message from Ban Ki-Moon, United Nations Secretary-General, and a statement from the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights.