Hospitals, health care workers and ambulances are increasingly targeted in conflicts worldwide from Libya to Somalia, depriving millions of sick and wounded people of treatment, Reuters quoted the International Committee of the Red Cross as saying on Wednesday. The independent aid agency, which delivers supplies and collects the wounded and dead from battlefields, called for a halt to deadly assaults on medical facilities and personnel. "Hospitals in Sri Lanka and Somalia have been shelled, ambulances in Libya shot at, paramedics in Colombia killed and wounded people in Afghanistan forced to languish for hours in vehicles held up at checkpoints," Yves Daccord, ICRC director-general, told a news briefing. In a report entitled "Health Care in Danger: Making the Case", the ICRC documented 655 violent incidents between 2008 and the start of 2011 in 16 countries that disrupted delivery of health care, many of them deliberate attacks violating international humanitarian law. In all, 1,834 people were killed or injured, including 159 health care workers in the attacks which it called "the tip of the iceberg". Some 128 medical personnel were kidnapped and 32 ambulances were damaged, it said. "They die because the ambulance does not get there in time, because health personnel are prevented from doing their work, because hospitals are themselves targets of attacks or simply because the environment is too dangerous for effective health care to be delivered," said Dr. Robin Coupland, a British war surgeon who led the ICRC research. The violence, often accompanied by looting, means doctors and nurses leave their jobs, hospitals run out of drugs or fuel to run generators and vaccination campaigns grind to a halt. This leaves patients even more vulnerable to diseases which can break out in conflict areas such as polio or cholera. In Libya, a healthcare system that relied on foreign workers was crippled when the war prompted an exodus, leaving hospitals in Misrata and Benghazi critically understaffed. Ajdabiyah hospital appears to have been "used as cover for snipers". -- SPA
