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
Alerts data capture
Alerts for a specific event are entered by the monitors, as soon as they have sufficient information of the event. The edit rights allows the monitors to edit or complete their data when additional information is available. The submissions are anonymous, with no mention of the name and the email of the NGO. The health cluster information manager, in case of data inconsistency or missing data, can issue queries to the monitor for data completeness.
Additionally, the health cluster information manager enters the alerts received from INSO on a weekly basis, into the alerts database, and the ones for PHR and Amnesty International received on a monthly basis.
At the end of the month, the alerts database consists of multiple alerts for the same event, that are corroborated at a latter stage, using the verification database
Review committee monthly meeting
The MEASURES review committee meets at the end of the month to verify the alerts for the corresponding month. The review committee consists of the health cluster information unit, INSO and selected health cluster partners. The health cluster information manager exports the data for alerts for the corresponding month and each alert is reviewed by the committee.