Right to health in conflict situations 2013, para. 28

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Paragraph text: Attacks on health workers including assaults, intimidation, threats, kidnapping, and killings, as well as arrests and prosecutions, are increasingly used as a strategy in conflict situations. Conflict-affected areas have recorded disruption in supply chains, looting of health facilities, demanding of confidential information about patients, intentional and recurrent shelling and bombardment of clinics and hospitals, and shooting at ambulances carrying patients to target civilians and health-care workers as a military strategy. In countries with poor health infrastructure, as may be the case with most conflict-affected regions, destruction of even a single hospital or attacks on already scarce health-care workers can have a devastating impact on the availability and accessibility of health services and therefore on public health. Furthermore, health-care workers may condemn the actions of security forces or may not cooperate in providing information about patients where laws may violate fundamental human rights. Such health-care workers may frequently be harassed, relocated, tortured, arrested and sentenced.

Body: Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health

Topic(s)

Person(s) affected