 Attacks on healthcare workers, a while ago, we thought we would have to introduce this topic and tell people about what a problem that is, but depressingly so, I'm afraid I do not have to introduce this topic much further because every single day we hear about health facilities being attacked in Syria, but elsewhere, about healthcare workers being attacked everywhere all the time and people really have the impression that things are getting from worse to worse. So what I would like to discuss with you is from WHO's point of view, the World Health Organization, what is the extent of the problem? Is it the real problem? Is it a big problem? Is it increasing or not? And what can we do about this? So that's, if you're okay, that's what we will discuss. Because today what we see is that we have hospitals, healthcare workers, patients, ambulances all seemingly under attack, but it's worse than that. It's the right to health that is being attacked and we do have the distinct impression that healthcare is specifically targeted in conflict situations. So when we say hospitals are under attack, well if you watch the news today or last week or the week before in Syria, in Aleppo, in Idlib, you see every week bombs falling on hospitals and actually you see them life falling on hospitals today. In Afghanistan we have all heard and outraged about the attack on the MSF hospital in Kunduz, in Kunduz where this was the hospital where most people from that area got their healthcare. It was one of the few hospitals that was serving people. You take that out, you have a problem. In Yemen hospitals are being attacked, but it's not only hospitals, it's healthcare workers. In Nigeria healthcare workers have been attacked for the crime of trying to vaccinate children against poliomyelitis. And if we haven't eradicated poliomyelitis in Pakistan and Afghanistan, one of the reasons is that healthcare workers are being targeted, killed over a hundred since 2012 have been attacked. So we have a problem there. In Myanmar today, if you're a healthcare worker and you want to provide healthcare to the Rohingya minority, you have a hard time actually doing so. So there's a number of things that where the healthcare worker is under attack. And not only in countries like that, we have issues like in Bahrain where people have been put in jail for the crime of actually treating people who were injured during protest. In Turkey today, there's a law being proposed that will make it illegal for healthcare workers to provide healthcare outside the hospitals, like protesters on Taksim Square. So there's a few issues that we follow. But so the hospitals are being attacked. The healthcare workers are coming under attack. The patients in South Sudan, in the hospital in Bentu, patients were being killed in their hospital bed in the hospital. And we are saying, well, what happened to the sanctity of healthcare? The Geneva Conventions are fairly clear about that. So big issue. Central African Republic, patients were being killed. The right to healthcare is being questioned. So this has, we think this has a measurable impact on health. And we endeavor to document that in places like Syria. But it has also an impact on international health security. If we fail to eradicate polio myelitis today, maybe tomorrow you will see polio myelitis showing up on your doorstep in Helsinki. And if the reason that we cannot do that is that polio vaccinators are being attacked, we now have a much wider problem. So these are the challenges we have today. And I've been talking more about the conflict areas because that's what we do. But it's not only conflict areas. The polio workers, yes. But in the Ebola areas, we saw that Ebola workers were attacked in Sierra Leone, but also in Guinea, because people misunderstood what they were actually doing. And so eight Ebola workers from the Red Cross were murdered in Guinea, because people were afraid. So it's in conflict areas, but it's also in non-conflict areas. We concentrate on the conflict areas. But you talk to ambulance drivers in South Africa, they say, this is a dangerous job for us. In France, there's a register in emergency mercy doctors that are being aggressed in emergency care centers. There's a register now and people keep track of that. But for us, my department, my department deals with the humanitarian emergencies within the World Health Organization. So we look at conflict areas. We look at humanitarian crisis. So in 2012, the World Health Assembly took on a resolution and said we want, that's how it usually is phrased, we call because we are a member state organization. I mean, if you think you have problems with your boss, we have 194 bosses. The ministers of health, they tell us what to do. And once a year, they come together in the World Health Assembly in May, beautiful weather in Geneva, everybody happy, but we get our instructions there. And then they call upon the director general, director general Margaret Chan, to provide the leadership and develop methods for collection and dissemination of data on attacks on health facilities. Because when they came to us and say, WHO, what's the extent of the problem? Well, we had to say, actually, we don't know. We do not know with data what is the extent of the problem. What is the nature of the problem? Well, we are not so sure. What is the impact of the problem? Well, we haven't really measured it. Well, WHO, we expect you to make recommendations to governments, to ministries of health, and we expect you to make these recommendations based on evidence. So instructions, Margaret Chan, please provide leadership for the collection of data. Of course, what does Margaret Chan do? She says, Rudy, please collect data. Okay, good. That's okay. So what do we know? What do we know today? Because we have different organizations working on this. The International Committee of the Red Cross has their program on healthcare in danger. Midsançois Frontier has a program that looks on healthcare under fire. But a lot of the data is not available. The ICRC data, they are from 2012 already. MSF looks mostly within their own program. So what we did is we looked at what can we find from open sources that is available today. And we looked at 2014-2015. And we actually produced the report and I brought a few copies for those who want. So in it, we looked at, we found 2014-2015. We found reports of almost 600 attacks in 19 different countries. We looked only at countries in conflict situations where almost 1,000 healthcare workers died, died, not slightly injured, were killed. 1,500 plus were injured. So that's what we can find because we think there is underreporting on this because we do not have a good system of recording this. So 65% of all these attacks were against healthcare centers. That's where healthcare workers are. But 26 are actually directly targeted to healthcare workers. And most of them are intentional. So because some people will say, well, you know, there's a war going on. Of course, there is damage. No, it's worse than that. A lot of it is intentional. So why do we care? Well, for us, the issue is we are now, because of this, depriving people who need life-saving care. I would say when they need it most. It's during conflict that they need it most. So that's why we think a lot of people who do very cynical thinking are targeting healthcare workers because that's where you make the most impact. We endanger healthcare workers. So we have people who actually, day in, day out, give the best of themselves to make sure that people get taken care of. And as a reward, they put their own life in danger. So it's really, really sort of the worst of the worst that can happen, we would think. The duty of care, of course, we have all committed that we will take care of people if you do medicine or nursing. So it undermines that. And it has an impact on the global health security. We had to go out and vaccinate against polio myelitis in Syria, in the ISIS areas, because that's where it happened. So you have to then take measures that put even more people in danger. But at some point, one has to do what you have to do. So of course, it is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law because the Geneva Conventions are very clear on that. You will always hear people saying, well, but are the hospitals really neutral? Have they not been used by belligerents? And yes, that's a valid question. But most of them, we do not have the information that that's the reason why they're attacked. And of course, we talk about lofty sustainable developments goal that we want to achieve in 2030. Well, if we can't solve the problems of providing decent healthcare to people in countries that are in fragile conditions, and I can name 30 of them there and then, then we are now never going to achieve these goals. And so we call on people to do the necessary to do it in the difficult countries, because it's okay to improve healthcare in Finland. But that's not where you can make the biggest difference. It's already quite okay. And our people, they travel to Sweden and to Costa Rica and to Sri Lanka, and it's like, who's going to Niger? Who is going to? Okay, so, so what is our aim? What we intend to do, and we have a program, Stop Attacks on Healthcare Workers, is we want to this attack to stop, to protect healthcare facilities and healthcare workers, to minimize disruptions so that people have access to healthcare when they need it. The chapter, the constitution of the World Health Organization on its first page says, what is the mandate of our organization? The World Health Organization's mandate is to ensure the highest possible standards of healthcare for people everywhere. So it's fully within our mandate to make sure that this is being done. Now, that charter is signed by all our member states, and there's 194 of them. So there's nobody who can say, well, we didn't know about it. Incidentally, they have also signed the Geneva conventions. So double whammy there. So we hold them account to that. So what do we need to do then? If we want to move this forward, we would like to make sure that we have the best available data, that we have country specific data and trends, and we would like governments to actually collect it and provide that data. It's a matter also of awareness. But we want to understand what is the extent of the problem, and we want to then make recommendations for action that are based on something. So we want to make sure that we document good practices, and then we feed that into the recommendations that we make. And we are working with the International Committee of the Red Cross on that, and we are very closely working with MSF on that. So this is what we recommend, what we want to do. Now, what does WHO do at the moment? Well, there are several things we do. We document the attacks. And this is the first of a number of reports that we just produced. And we would like to do this on an annual basis. And we do this now also on a quarterly basis. And you will find these data on our website. That's part of our role of developing the methodology. Remember these 194 Ministers of Health. Margaret Chan, please develop a methodology. So we're working on that. Not so easy, mind you, while you're scientists. So you put 10 epidemiologists around the table. And I tell you, after three days, you still haven't figured out what exactly means attack, what exactly is a health care center, what exactly is a health care worker, not so easy as it looks like. But we're getting there. So what are good practices? What can we do about it? How do we avoid attacks? And that also seems pretty straightforward. Common thinking, for example, not so long ago was, well, you will have to tell all parties in this fight where your hospital is, provide them with the GPS coordinates. Well, that didn't work very well in Kunduz. Neither did it in Aleppo. Neither did it in Yemen. So is this still a valid recommendation? Because we like to think that we are protected because we provide health care. So we have to now look very critically, what are the best practices? So that's what we do. We advocate. We have to do diplomacy. And we have now also started a safe hospitals program. How can we make hospitals safer and not only safer, but keep functioning throughout conflict? So Margaret Chan, all of you know, of course, Director General of the World Health Organization, came up with the five A's. The awareness, advocacy, attitude, action and accountability. Awareness, we have to make sure everybody knows this is a problem and everybody knows about the extent of the problem. Advocacy, nobody should remain silent. When something happens, we will have to make sure that we talk about it. We have to make sure that we also advocate with our member states. I mean, they instruct Margaret to do things. Well, Margaret tells them that they will also have to do a number of things. And things have to change. So our attitude has to be this is unacceptable that in 2016, healthcare workers are being attacked, hospitals are being attacked, not acceptable. That's our attitude. It has to stop. Provide action. Well, how much action can you do? Because people will say in Syria, John Kerry is talking to Mr. Lavrov. It is being discussed at the Security Council. What can you do more? Well, we would like to believe that continued advocacy, the drip, drip, drip method towards ministers of health and prime ministers does work. And you would be surprised because also WHO does quiet diplomacy. When the ministers from Bahrain come, it's on the agenda of Margaret Chan. I'm not saying this will change everything tomorrow, but it's part of a concerted effort to change attitudes and accountability. And we are very much with the International Committee of the Red Cross. These are violations of international humanitarian law. Somebody needs to be held accountable for these attacks. Now, there's mechanisms in the UN to do so. But these are the five As that we are now promoting on this topic. And so when there is the World Health Assembly, and all the ministers are there, we put on sessions on it. So we have everybody together and we explain. You will see Margaret Chan over there, Valerie Amos of the Interagency Standing Committee, OCHA, the big emergency relief coordinator. They're all there. So we do technical briefings. We have high level events. We want to have maybe one more resolution that really enshrines us in what we need to do. We provide input in the Security Council briefs that the Secretary General does. We have press statements, articles, try to advocate. So that's what we actually do. And this is how it goes in the margin. We talk to Peter Maurer, the president of the ICIC. We talk to the emergency coordinator. Bruce Aylward is the assistant director general who is leading this program. So these things, they do happen. Future directions. Well, we now have our attacks on healthcare worker program, and we would like people to be an advocate for this. As a matter of fact, what I should do is I should give one of our T-shirts to Yoko and ask her, please wear this, right? This is the president. So we'll give it to all our members of the panel. And so I will ask them to actually be an advocate for us. There you go. All right. And if you want to be an advocate, I have a few more T-shirts left for you. But you will have to wear it. Okay. All right. Oops. So this is the dashboard that you have that is on our website. For example, the first quarter of this year, 57 attacks, 100 people died. This is January, February, March, 2016. This is what we find from open sources, right? In 17 different countries today, as we speak. So it's a problem that is not going away. So what we at WHO need to do, we want to advocate. One of the reasons I'm here, collect the data, the extent of the nature, and then work with everybody to make sure we put preventive measures in place. That's what we want to do so that the attacks will stop. And we would like to enlist you all to join us in that campaign so that we together can make this problem go away. That's what we would like to do. I will leave it with that. Questions? I'm happy to answer them. Thank you. And there's copies of the report.