Violence against health care: The scope of the problem and what needs to be done

Attacks on health care services are a global phenomenon.  A review of attacks and interference with health care through searches of media reports, governmental and UN agency publications, NGO reports, and others sources revealed that attacks and interference with health care services occurred in 20 countries from January 2014 through March 2015.  Conduct included targeted attacks on hospitals and clinics, attacks that failed to discriminate between military targets and health facilities, attacks on and obstruction of the passage of ambulances, harassment, arrest, killing and torturing of medical personnel, and attacks on patients. Additionally in many instances patients could not gain access to health care because of pervasive insecurity.  In order to address the problem, pragmatic steps toward greater security of health care is warranted, but other steps need to be taken at the national and international level.  These include a) strengthening norms; b) systematic data collection on attacks on health care; c) monitoring and reporting of incidents; d) accountability.  The presentation will review the status of initiatives to achieve these objectives.