WHO

In the early hours of 3 October, rockets slammed into a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 14 health workers and injuring 37. An MSF clinic in the southern Yemen city of Taiz was bombed on 2 December, injuring 9 people, including 2 MSF staff. Since 2012, almost 60% of hospitals in Syria have been partially or completely destroyed, and more than half of the country’s health workers have fled or been killed.

In January, IntraHealth International submitted a statement on behalf of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition to the World Health Organization’s Executive Board Meeting in Geneva. Submitted as part of agenda item 8.2, poliomyelitis, the full text of the statement is below and also published by the WHO along with other statements by NGOs that are in official relations with the WHO. IntraHealth is a steering committee member of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition.

As major emergencies around the globe increase in scale, complexity and frequency, WHO is calling for an end to the targeting of health workers in conflicts and other humanitarian crises, which represent a breach of the fundamental right to health.

The World Health Organization and its health partners are gravely concerned about the increasing attacks on health facilities, ambulances, personnel and patients in Gaza. Since the escalation of violence in Gaza, reports indicate that medical facilities have been damaged resulting in death and injuries to patients and health professionals.

Experts are calling for increased protection to healthcare workers and patients in crisis situations in the face of growing attacks on health facilities, which challenge notions of their neutrality. “We need multiple and reinforcing means to protect health care in situations of violence, including the well-developed mechanisms of human rights monitoring, reporting and accountability,” Leonard Rubenstein, chair of Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, a group of humanitarian and human rights organizations, told IRIN from the World Health Assembly, which is being held from 19 to 24 May in Geneva.