Conflict

Report from the World Health Organization, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and UN Children’s Fund We strongly condemn attacks on health and any other civilian facilities in Syria and are deeply concerned by the serious implications for patients, health personnel and provision of critical medical supplies.

The European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and seven national Red Cross societies are carrying out an outdoor campaign between 1 and 22 December to mobilize public opinion on the need to respect health-care providers and facilities in armed-conflict situations. A series of posters illustrating the idea that it is possible to give the wounded and the sick timely access to health care, even in the midst of violence, is on display in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, London, Madrid, Paris and Warsaw.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today reaffirmed its call to the Bahraini government to immediately release medical professionals who have been wrongfully imprisoned and stop the ongoing targeting of the medical community. PHR, which has documented the Bahraini government’s attacks on doctors and illegal use of tear gas, also stressed the need to stop shipments of tear gas to the kingdom in order to prevent more abuses against the Bahraini people.

More than 85 percent of health workers in Turkey are subjected to violence at least once during their professional life, according to a recent survey conducted among the health workers by the health union, Sağlık-Sen. Health workers who have been exposed to violence at least once during their professional life made up 86.8 percent, with 81.4 percent of respondents saying they were exposed to violence last year, according to a Sağlık-Sen survey conducted among 1,300 health workers in 15 difference provinces across Turkey via face to face interviews.

A bomb exploded Monday near a group of polio vaccinators in Peshawar, killing at least two policemen, The New York Times reported. Since December, at least 20 polio workers have been killed in similar assaults. Such violence has threatened the global effort to stamp out the disease in the three countries where the virus is still endemic — Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.