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Abstract
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Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, unanimous global support and gratitude have been shown to healthcare providers, who have appeared as the heroes of these turbulent times. Yet, and despite this wave of solidarity, attacks specifically targeting healthcare professionals and the places where they work have continuously been reported.
The World Health Assembly (WHA) requested the Secretariat in 2012 "to provide leadership at the global level in developing methods for systematic collection and dissemination of data on attacks on health facilities" and health workers, "in coordination with other relevant United Nations bodies and other relevant actors" (WHA 65.20).1 Four years later, on May 3, 2016, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2286, requiring member states to act to end violence against healthcare personnel and facilities.2
Over recent years, attempts have been made to increase data availability on the nature and extent of attacks on healthcare through advocacy. International institutions such as the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) as well as nongovernmental organizations have responded to this call with initiatives aimed at expanding investigations into and the documentation and dissemination of research on attacks on healthcare personnel and facilities and their consequences.3,4
Literature on violence against healthcare reflects predominantly contexts of conflict. Moreover, much of the academic research on violence against healthcare is qualitative and focuses on analyses of secondary data. In a recent analysis, very few research articles or reports (4 out of 45) considered new quantitative data; this underscores the difficulty of collecting and compiling data in conflict settings, with the resulting knowledge not clearly linked to curbing of frequency and/or scale of incidents.5 The same review article revealed a great imbalance with regards to the countries studies in the field of attacks against healthcare: while Syria was featured in 7 manuscripts, other conflict settings, such as Democratic Republic of Congo and Libya, where violence against healthcare is significant, were not studied at all...
Language: en |