Respecting and Protecting Health Care in Armed Conflicts

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Ms. Shanzay Naveed, a 3rd year MBBS student at Allama Iqbal Medical College, an affiliated member and Assistant Director of PUBSSD at IFMSA. She is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

According to the International Law and Rule 25, “Medical personnel exclusively assigned to medical duties must be respected and protected in all circumstances. They lose their protection if they commit, outside their humanitarian function, acts harmful to the enemy.” Despite this law, it is not uncommon that this aspect of international law is violated during conflicts.

As wars and armed conflicts have evolved from open battlefields to urban areas, and from pistols to mass shelling and bombardment by air forces, the wounded and sick are no longer just those in uniform.

Attacking a hospital, threatening a doctor, coercing a nurse to give preferential treatment to armed fighters, hijacking ambulances, using patients as human shields – these are not examples of collateral damage.

These are not sad realities that we have to get used to. They are abominations and trends that must be fought. The direct effects on health-care facilities, personnel and transports are grave, yet the indirect effects go even deeper.

Where a lot of people live closely together and depend on infrastructure and public services that are all intertwined, the effects of attacks and destruction are greatest. Risk for post-traumatic stress (PTSD) is well-documented among deployed military health care workers and is similar when compared to military personnel.

Personnel engaging in medical tasks during armed conflict must always be respected and protected, unless they commit, outside of their humanitarian function, acts that are harmful to the enemy. Medical personnel may not be punished for providing impartial care. Some medical professionals, such as physicians, have certain ethical duties to fulfil.

Medical units, such as hospitals and other facilities that have been set up for medical purposes, must be respected and protected in all circumstances. Parties to an armed conflict must take measures to protect medical units from attacks, such as ensuring that they are not situated in the vicinity of military objectives.

Any means of transportation that is assigned exclusively to the conveyance of the wounded and sick, medical personnel or medical equipment or supplies must be respected and protected in the same way as medical units.

Parties to an armed conflict who use medical units or transports with the intent of leading the opposing parties to believe they are protected, while using them to launch attacks or carry out other acts harmful to the enemy, commit acts of perfidy.

Ensuring the safety of patients and medical staff is very difficult all over the world, regardless of the healthcare system model that is in place. The provision of medical services depends on the involvement of many representatives of various medical professions, methods of financing, condition of infrastructure, applied medical technologies, and the level of safety culture in the implementation of numerous processes.

It is also important to consider how patient safety can be impaired when the health and safety conditions of health workers are not guaranteed.

References

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3611028

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.886394/full

About the author

Shanzay Naveed, a 3rd year MBBS student at Allama Iqbal Medical College, is an affiliated member and Assistant Director of PUBSSD at IFMSA. Her 2 articles have already been published on European Sting, 6 stories on TWS Publications and an article & a story on Brewing Minds. She is in organizing team of AIMC Scientific Conference 2022. She is Volunteer Resource Secretary at VFHAT and Assistant Director of Education and Networking Team of AJRS. She has presented her research on SCICON 2022. She has attended VCON’23 and NGA’23.