Reuters AlertNet
Monday, April 23, 2012
The London "Health Care in Danger" meeting today (Monday 23 April) is
part of a four-year project to confront the insecurity, violence and
threats that undermine the safe and effective delivery of health care in
armed conflicts and other emergencies.
It is the first of a series of
expert consultations that will take place across the world to find
remedies to a problem that leaves patients untreated, clinics shut down
and the wounded and the sick left to die.
Research from the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) shows that people die in
large numbers not because they are direct victims of a roadside bomb or
a shooting but because the ambulance does not get there in time,
because health-care personnel are prevented from doing their work,
because hospitals are themselves targets of attacks or simply because
the environment is too dangerous for effective health care to be
delivered.
Ambulances have been used in suicide attacks in
Afghanistan, clearly-marked hospitals hit by rocket fire in Libya,
emergency rooms invaded by gunmen in Iraq, doctors murdered in Somalia
and patients executed inside medical vehicles in Colombia.
"When
armed confrontations occur, medical needs soar just as the ability to
meet them plummets," said Vivienne Nathanson, the Director of
Professional Activities at the British Medical Association and a speaker
at the London meeting. "While this problem cannot be tackled by the
health community alone, we do need to examine what measures we as
health-care professionals can take in the face of what has become an
untenable situation."
At the London meeting, over 100 medical
professionals and humanitarian specialists will develop the health
community's own recommendations on what governments and
inter-governmental organizations can do to make sure that health care
can be delivered in a secure environment. In addition, the symposium
will explore how health-care professionals working amid violence manage
the dilemmas arising from being a witness to possible violations of
international law.
"Medical ethics are very much at the centre of
the debate among health professionals in situations of armed violence,"
said Robin Coupland, a medical adviser at the ICRC and author of a
study examining the issue. "In environments of violence the wounded or
sick are at times refused treatment. Discrimination arising from a
polarized conflict climate results in the loss of lives."
This
symposium, organized by the ICRC, British Red Cross, British Medical
Association and World Medical Association, will produce a public report
summarizing its main findings and recommendations.
While the
London symposium focuses on the role of health-care professionals, other
events taking place this year and next will bring together military
professionals and other weapon bearers, civil society representatives,
various Red Cross and Red Crescent societies and other policy makers to
tackle the problem of insecurity in health care provision.