Violence Against Healthcare

The purpose of this first module on violence against health care Is to highlight and understand the situations and the constraints faced on the ground in conflicts and emergencies. These sitautions will be analysed both from the health care providers perspective as well as from the beneficiairies perspective. A special focus on Mental Health and psychosocial support, ethical dilemmas and riks analysis

Today, an elaborate international legal framework exists whose aim is to guarantee protection of patients and health-care providers from violence in armed conflict or other emergencies. However, violence against patients and health-care providers remains a sad reality in such situations. Still, it is important for those who have an influence over the respect for the law, like State authorities, State armed forces, armed groups or members of communities, as well as for health-care professionals or those who will become health-care professionals themselves to identify who has to follow the law, what the rules describe and when they apply. A better understanding of the law may contribute to better behavior on the ground, if there is general willingness to comply with legal rules. For health-care professionals, the law may be a tool that can be invoked towards authorities, armed forces, armed groups and others for more effective protection. This module should contribute towards these aims by identifying international legal rules relevant to the protection of patients and health-care providers and pointing towards legal and practical challenges in their implementation.

This module will inform you of the the general security challenges that ambulance and prehospital services face in situations of armed conflict or other emergencies. Unfortunately, challenges also include targetted attacks or threats of violence against the ambulance and prehospital. Direct and indirect attacks may be carried out by arms carriers, but also by the local communities themselves. Through the following chapters, we will try to understand some of the reasons behind such threats and attacks, as well as present you with some solutions that the service providers can implement to reduce risks and the impact that threats and attacks may have on the service providers and the people they seek to help. It should be noted that these solutions and good practices have to be considered up against the context in which they are to be implemented. What works in one country or area, may not be as relevant in another.

This module speaks of how health services are valuable at any time, but particularly during emergencies resulting from any hazard (radio nuclear, disease, chemical, food safety, social/political, natural); during emergencies, hospitals may face the additional burden of overcrowding, infrastructure damage, loss of staff, and increased violence against health care facilities and workers becoming victims of the emergencies themselves; therefore hospitals must be strengthened to stay safe and resilient even when faced with these difficult challenges.