World Health Organization

A new digital instant messaging tool that relies on WhatsApp and developed by the WHO is designed to detect, verify, and log attacks on health facilities, health workers, and patients.The tool was piloted in Syria and is being deployed in Jordan and Pakistan.

Electricity cuts and continued shortages of medicines and medical supplies in the Gaza Strip are severely restricting the access of 2 million people to critical medical care, the WHO has warned. At least 30 hospitals, 70 primary health care centres and a blood blank are at risk of full or partial closure due to continued power outages and not enough fuel or spare parts for back-up generators.

Ahead of World Humanitarian Day, WHO is drawing attention to continued attacks on health staff and health facilities. In 2014 alone, WHO received reports of 372 attacks in 32 countries on health workers, resulting in 603 deaths and 958 injuries, while similar incidents have been recorded this year.

Two health workers giving polio vaccines to children were shot dead in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, prompting the World Health Organisation to suspend its operations in the area. Anti-polio workers started being attacked after a Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, ran a fake polio campaign in the city of Abbottabad to help the United States track down Osama bin Laden, according to a senior health official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the latest killings happened.

On May 15 the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition sent a letter to World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan urging her to include in her World Health Assembly opening address a forceful statement condemning attacks on doctors, nurses, emergency medical personnel, and other health workers, particularly in Syria, which are taking place at an unprecedented level. The letter, which also has the support of the World Medical Association, called attention to a new study by the International Committee of the Red Cross, Violent Incidents Affecting Health Care, which reported that at least 921 violent incidents against health care personnel, infrastructure, and wounded or sick people took place in 2012.