Health Workers

BEIRUT: An unprecedented aerial bombardment of Aleppo by the Syrian government has sent thousands of people fleeing in recent weeks and exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation in the city. Some of the most intense bombing came during the Geneva II peace talks between the Assad regime and the opposition-in-exile which began in late January, with 800 people dying in the first week of the discussions alone.

The killing had begun. Bullets were flying, armed rebels were advancing and the terrified hospital staff had fled to the bush. Inside the abandoned hospital, three Canadian doctors refused to leave. Even as the fighting raged toward them, they performed an emergency cesarean section to save a pregnant woman’s life. Then they ran and hid as bullets began thwacking into the hospital in the town of Bor, South Sudan.

Human security crises, and international responses to them, are a regular feature of the global landscape. Human security crises not only affect the population directly but also threaten the systems upon which the population depends, which include the health system. The weak health systems in fragile states are especially vulnerable to crises that can further weaken or even destroy them, resulting in these states being unable to implement critical health programmes - such as ones addressing infant and maternal mortality - or to respond to threats such as epidemics.

It was the third week of an uprising in Syria that would eventually evolve into a brutal civil war and already the wounded were showing up at the hospital in the Damascus suburb where 29-year-old Ahmed was doing rotations during his medical residency. Ahmed, who asked that only one part of his name be published because he is afraid of repercussions from Syria’s security agencies, had only just started examining a young man with bruises and a deep puncture wound on his right side when two armed security officials burst into the examining room barking questions.

Marie Durling of World Vision presented the following statement to the Executive Board of the World Health Organization on January 25 in Geneva: Statement from World Vision on item 13.2M, WHO’s response, and role as the health cluster lead, in meeting the growing demands of health in humanitarian emergencies (resolution WHA 65.20).