War

The outbreak of polio in the Syrian Arab Republic announced by the World Health Organization a few weeks ago is a troubling reminder that global conflicts threaten the public’s health. Violence, like the 2-1/2-year-old civil war in Syria, can lead to significant disruption and/or long term damage to the public health infrastructure, including basic sanitation efforts, maintenance of a safe water supply, basic nutritional needs, and disease monitoring and prevention.

On a street leading to the besieged Rabaa al-Adawiya protest camp, several doctors set up a makeshift ward on the pavement. Paving stones became pillows. Car covers became beds. Instead of medicine, all the doctors could offer were cartons of fruit juice bought en masse from a nearby kiosk. And all the while, rapid gunfire was heard hitting walls around the corner. The wounded were hurried over at a rate of one every minute.

Francoise Duroch of Médecins sans frontières describes how conflict and violence disrupt health care and how medical workers find themselves the direct targets of violence. She talks about how the stigma attached to sexual violence prevents victims seeking support.

Last Friday, a team of PHR staff and members of the PHR chapter of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine visited Congressional offices to advocate for the Medical Neutrality Protection Act. This Act is a bipartisan bill introduced in May 2013 by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

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.