PHA-Exchange> The Adverse Public Healt Sequences of Armed Conflicts in Human Development Report 2005

[Ghassan]

Dear Colleagues of PHA,

I would like to share with you this information about the armed violence sequences for public health in The Human Development Report 2005.

Hope you find it interesting.

  Best Regards

 Ghassan Shahrour
 Yarmouk

IANSA Public Health Net on Small Arms
 Damascus - Syria
 Email 1:  afodafro at scs-net.org
 Email 2:  syria at icbl.org


This year's Human Development Report takes stock of human development, including progress towards the MDGs. Looking beyond statistics, it highlights the human costs of missed targets and broken promises. Extreme inequality between countries and within countries is identified as one of the main barriers to human development-and as a powerful brake on accelerated progress towards the MDGs. 

Pls, be informed that Chapter 5 focuses on violent Conflict:

Chapter 5: Violent conflict-bringing the real threat into focus (536KB)

It includes important information about : the armed violence sequences for public health.

Hope you find it interesting.

The adverse consequences for public health:

 Violent conflict generates obvious health risks in the short run. Over the longer term the health impact of violent conflict claims more lives than bullets.

Most of the 2 million child deaths attributable to conflict fall into this category. Similarly, increased vulnerability to disease and injury poses major threats for vulnerable groups, especially for refugees and internally displaced people. Acute malnutrition, diarrhoeal diseases, measles, respiratory infections and malaria are often cited as reasons why mortality rates among refugees have been more than 80 times the baseline rates in parts of Africa. But even the non-displaced suffer because diseases that develop in refugee camps tend to spread easily to local areas. In Chechnya the rate for tuberculosis was found to be 160 cases per 10,000 compared with 90 for the rest of the Russian Federation. Violent conflict has a proven track record in disrupting the supply of basic health services, especially to poor communities. Like schools, health facilities are often viewed by rebel groups as a legitimate military target. Nearly half of all primary health centres in Mozambique were looted and the surrounding areas mined during the civil war.30 Medical personnel often flee con-flict areas as well. Even areas with good health indicators prior to the onset of violence can experience sharp deterioration. In Bosnia and Herzegovina 95% of children were immunized before hostilities broke out in the early 1990s. By 1994, at the peak of the fighting, the immunization rate had plunged to less than 35%. Conflict can disrupt the provision of important public goods needed to improve health across society and combat debilitating and deadly diseases.

Despite worldwide attempts to eradicate Guinea worm, river blindness and polio, these diseases have taken hold in areas of the most intense conflict in Africa. Armed conflict has had a role in the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In 2003 of the 17 countries that had more than 100,000 children orphaned by AIDS, 13 were in conflict or on the brink of an emergency. Several factors can contribute to the spread of HIV during conflict situations, and many of those factors leave women particularly vulnerable: population displacement; breakdown of relationships; use of rape as a weapon; increased sexual coercion in exchange for money, food or protection; collapse of health systems, with a resulting breakdown in access to information and supplies that can help control exposure to HIV; and declining safety of blood transfusions.
















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