BACKGROUND
During 2015 an important increase in the number of attacks on health care facilities has been observed. As such, the health cluster decided to collect information to permit monitoring of the situation.
In 2012 WHO received this mandate from its member states: "to provide leadership at the global level in developing methods for systematic collection and dissemination of data on attacks on health facilities, health workers, health transports, and patients in complex humanitarian emergencies. Following this mandate they developed a global tool called MEASURES: Monitoring of Events Against Safe Use & Running of HEalth Services in complex emergencies to document these as well as their consequences on the access to health care services and, on the capacity of health providers to deliver care in order to inform strategic approaches for safe/safer health care delivery primarily in countries in complex emergencies.
Being in a context where attacks on health care are very frequent, the health cluster has been asked to participate in the piloting and revising of this tool by HQ. For the health cluster, being part of a global reporting system allows for a more robust methodology and more credibility while systematisation of data collection incites towards following rules for safe and ethical data management and offer increased visibility of the importance of the problematic.
The present report was issued following an unprecedented increase in the number of attacks on healthcare in one single day that occurred on Monday February 15th 2016.
METHODOLOGY
Alert reports are being entered online by the health cluster partners into a secure database with SSL encryption.
All the partners submit to the database in an anonymous manner. Each incident goes into a further verication process by corroboration of the information from the different sources. After the verication process is completed, data are extracted and transferred to the statistical analysis software for cleaning, analysis and production of results, tables and graphs. Results are presented with a disaggregation according to the conrmation status of the attack. A conrmed attack implies an attack that satises the conrmation criteria according to the verication methodology adopted by the health cluster whereas an unconrmed attack refers to an attack which occurrence is conrmed, however some secondary data related to the attack is yet to be conrmed (number of casualties).
RESULT
Geographical distribution
On Monday the 15th of February 2016, we witnessed a signicant increase in the numbers of strikes hitting health facilities, the highest number ever recorded in 2016 and the highest since August 2015. Moreover, the health cluster recorded 7 attacks, of which 3 are conrmed according to the health cluster methodology (cf. denition in the methodology). The attacks were concentrated in Idleb (with 3 attacks), Aleppo (2) and Dara’a governorates. (Table 1) (Figure 1)
Type of health facilities Regarding the type of health facilities, Hospitals with IPD and OPD capacities had the biggest share, with 6 of them being hit, the 7th one being a Primary Healthcare facility in Idleb governorate. It’s important to note that one of the health facilities in Aleppo governorate has been evacuated 2 days ago, as the front lines were closing in on the town. (Table 2) (Figure 2)