Africa Focus:Medics in Africa conflict zones increasingly vulnerable to attacks

Health personnel in conflict zones are becoming increasingly vulnerable to armed attacks with at least 2,000 incidents having been reported in the last two years, officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

As a result, the ICRC is engaging military health experts involved in peacekeeping missions to gain knowledge on best practices on how to reduce the attacks.

"This practical approach is critical to helping address the alarming lack of respect for health personnel, equipment and facilities that we continue to see in armed conflict and other emergencies," head of the ICRC regional delegation in Harare Thomas Merkelbach told Xinhua in a recent interview.

Merkelbach said the first Geneva Convention of 1863 was put in place to protect military medical personnel, their equipment, facilities and clients.

"Unfortunately, the protection of health care personnel, facilities and equipment as well as those entitled to these services in increasingly under threat," he said.

ICRC held a seminar with 17 military health experts from 11 Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries to work on improving access to health services during peace support operations and ensuring that access to health care remained the essence of humanitarian action.

This comes ahead of the region making the SADC Standby Force operational at the end of 2015 as envisaged by the African Union.

Forces from SADC member states are currently involved in peacekeeping missions with South Africa present in the Central African Republic and in the Democratic Republic of Congo where it is cooperating with Malawi and Tanzania.

Previously, Zimbabwe has been involved in peace-keeping missions in Somalia, Angola and Kosovo.

On a broader scale, Africa has deployed more than 100,000 uniformed peacekeepers since early 2015 and as of May, there were at least nine peacekeeping missions supported by more than 80,000 troops and 15,000 civilians in countries that also Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Somalia and Guinea Bissau.

However, many health facilities have come under attack, especially from terrorist organizations with little regard for human rights and the rights for the injured to access health facilities.

ICRC Armed Forces regional delegate Jacques Lemay added that there had been an increase in incidents of prevention of access to health care. About 2,000 such incidents had taken place in the last two years, he said.

"Of these 2,000, 52 percent were inside health facilities. We have also had loss of lives and three health personnel are currently being held hostage for over a year now," he said.

He would not disclose where the three were being held for fear of jeopardizing their chances of being released.

In one reported incident, an assistant medical coordinator in the Central African Republic said armed men threatened them and insisted on getting in their car and making them take them where they wanted to go.

"When we tried to explain our work to them they became angry and threatened us with machetes and rifles," the coordinator said.

In Somalia, at least one case of suicide bombing has occurred where at least 25 medical students and doctors were killed, while in Cote d'Ivoire some patients were denied access to health facilities.

Some of the attacks on health facilities are for the purposes of looting drugs and supplies, Lemay said, adding that there was need therefore to raise awareness within the military community to allow health facilities to operate in terms of the Geneva Convention.

In some of the incidents, medical personnel were forced to breach medical ethics, for example, by being required to withhold treatment from adversaries.

SADC Military Health Services Regional Coordinator Kaka Mudambo said the engagement with ICRC was important because the SADC Standby Force was almost ready and so, peacekeepers were expected to be ready to deal with the security of health facilities.

The SADC Standby Force is part of the bigger African Standby Force whose mandate includes: observation and monitoring missions; peace support operations; intervention in a member state in respect of grave circumstances or at the request of a member state to restore peace and security, preventive deployment to prevent a dispute or a conflict from escalating or an ongoing violent conflict from spreading to neighboring areas or states, peace building and provision of humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering of civilian population in conflict areas.

Both sides to a conflict can be guilty of attacking medical facilities, and the apolitical ICRC takes great care not to antagonize any of the warring parties, emphasizing on its mandate to extend humanitarian assistance to the needy.

Engagement with military health personnel is, therefore, a major step towards reducing attacks on health facilities as there will be greater understanding on the need to adhere to the Geneva Convention. Enditem