Violent attacks on health workers on the rise
Medical neutrality, once sacrosanct, under threat in war-torn areas, report finds
On the streets of Pakistan, an attacker opens fire on a polio vaccination team. In war-torn Syria, a hospital shuts down after several bombings in a single week. And, in Burundi, wounded soldiers are gunned down in their hospital beds and dragged away by police, leaving trails of blood on the tiled floor.
These events, all of which have occurred in the past few weeks, are part of what human rights groups consider a growing and troubling trend: brazen attacks on health workers, health facilities and on patients in times of conflict and civil unrest.
Since 2014, such attacks have unfolded in at least17 countries, according to a new report published Wednesday by Human Rights Watch and the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition. In Syria, especially, the situation is “the most egregious” that Susannah Sirkin has witnessed in her 28 years with Physicians for Human Rights, a member of the coalition’s steering committee.
“I’ve never seen a time where we’ve had so many places with such overt and extreme violations of this type,” Sirkin said in a phone interview from New York. “There is a new normal that is allowing for the complete ignoring or flouting of the principles of medical neutrality.
“That’s why we’re sounding the alarm.”
The publication of the report, Attacks on Health, was timed to coincide with the 68th World Health Assembly taking place in Geneva, where the coalition is pushing for the World Health Organization to start monitoring systematically attacks on health workers and facilities.
The report is far from comprehensive and many attacks probably go undocumented. But without robust surveillance of the problem, there is no way of knowing its true scale or how to effectively respond, said Joseph Amon, health director with Human Rights Watch.
“It’s difficult to really generate attention toward the outrageous targeting of health centres and to press for accountability,” he said.
“We really need to be able to track where this is happening, and how often it’s happening, so we can see what needs to be done to eliminate these kinds of attacks.”
The 22-page report highlighted both countries that have seen a longterm pattern of attacks on health workers and also high-risk areas and “countries of concern.”
These countries include countries in peacetime such as Turkey, where the government has criminalized emergency care provided by private practitioners after a state ambulance has arrived.
This is a thinly veiled move to penalize doctors who help anti-government protesters.
The report found that West Africa is a region of concern, as health workers in Ebola-affected countries have been attacked or even killed over the past year.
Medical neutrality is enshrined in international law, but it is also a concept that has long been considered sacrosanct, Sirkin said. She fears this is now changing.