Health Workers

So far this year, MSF has treated 213 children for complicated measles at its hospital in Sadda, which specializes in children’s healthcare. “What is upsetting is that so many of the conditions we see here are preventable,” says Dr. Rahman Sakhi, one of the senior doctors at MSF who sees dozens of such cases every month. “The community is suffering unnecessarily because of the militarization in the area.” More than 175 health facilities and 500 schools have been targeted and destroyed by militants across FATA since 9/11, according to Nizam Khan Dawar, a human rights specialist and CEO of the Tribal Development Network. “Even in war zones, hospitals and schools should be neutral places and shouldn’t be attacked,” he says.

Commenting on the recent United Nations General Assembly resolution urging governments to act to ensure the safety of health workers, the World Medical Association President Dr. Xavier Deau welcomed the new UN Resolution on “Global health and foreign policy”. ‘I welcome the fact that we are ending the year with the strongest statement yet from the UN on the issue of attacks on health workers’, he said. ‘The past year has seen yet more deaths and injuries among health workers whose only job has been to care for patients in often extremely difficult circumstances’.

In early December, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on “global health and foreign policy.” As the title suggests, it was a bit of a grab bag, covering issues such as vaccines, strengthening health systems, and Ebola. But the resolution also included the General Assembly’s strongest statement yet on the issue of attacks on health workers, facilities, and patients, and called on governments to act to ensure health workers and patients are safe and facilities protected from attack.

A resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly recognizes for the first time the severity of attacks on health workers, facilities, and patients in all circumstances, and demands respect by States for provisions of medical ethics and human rights law, as well as international humanitarian law, said the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. The resolution, with 62 co-sponsors, urges States to take immediate steps to ensure health workers in all countries are protected from violence, whether in armed conflict or in times of peace.

While their mission is to save lives, doctors and other health workers in Syria are being targeted in unprecedented numbers, unlike any prior conflict. Many doctors have already fled the war-ravaged country, but a group of Chicago-area doctors are risking their own lives to cross battle lines and save lives.