Violence against health care must end

 

Violence against patients and health-care workers is one of the most crucial yet overlooked humanitarian issues today. The Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement runs a global campaign aiming to improve security and delivery of impartial and efficient health care in armed conflict and other emergencies.

THE PROBLEM : The knock-on effect

A single violent incident against health-care infrastructure or workers can have immeasurable longer-term repercussions on entire communities with war-related or chronic health-care problems.

Medical care in the line of fire

Joint op-ed by the Presidents of MSF and ICRC, originally published by Al Jazeera, exposing the scale of threats to health care, the consequences and what the organizations are doing to bring about real change on the ground.

  • Somalia: Lifeline Mogadishu

    Amongst the ruins of the health infrastructure due to the war Somalia, local health workers are struggling to provide emergency medical services. The photographer Andre Liohn filmed one of the few ambulance teams working on the ground.

  • Syria: humanitarian catastrophe

    The conflict in Syria is a major humanitarian disaster. Millions of Syrians need help. Their needs are growing, and the response from the outside world is insufficient. In an effort to bridge the gap, the ICRC is appealing for 62.3 million Swiss francs so it can do more.

  • DR Congo: war surgery – healing the horror

    Video series – For some people in the Kivus, getting emergency medical treatment is now the stuff of miracles, in part due to direct threats to the wounded and the medical staff attending to them.

  • Syria: Images of war

    Fear, pain, the loss of loved ones and the struggle for survival have been a daily reality for many Syrians for two years now, with no end in sight. These photos show just a few examples of the conflict's heavy toll on civilians.

  • Colombia: health care in danger - insights series

    Four decades of conflict in southern Colombia have made health care a rare commodity on the Rio Caguan. An ICRC delegate explains his work taking mobile health clinics along the river to thousands of villagers who would otherwise be cut off from medical care.

  • Health care void in western Côte d'Ivoire

    Entire villages have been destroyed and health-care centres looted in western Cote d'Ivoire. As an uneasy calm settles, thousands of refugees and internally displaced people are starting to return home.