Newswise — A Johns Hopkins University scholar, lawyer and human rights advocate is making a final push this week for the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO) to commit formally to documenting attacks on health care workers in conflict zones.

Leonard Rubenstein, JD, LLM, faculty member of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, will be at the World Health Assembly’s 65th session in Geneva, Switzerland May 21-26, representing the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition. The coalition will urge the Assembly to adopt a resolution passed by the Executive Board of WHO in January that would formalize its leadership in documenting attacks on health facilities, workers, transports and patients in conflict areas. The resolution is expected to come up for a vote May 25 or 26.

“International law requires respect for doctors' and nurses' ethical duty to provide care impartially to all who are in need,” says Rubenstein, also a Senior Scholar at Johns Hopkins’ Center for Public Health and Human Rights. “Collecting data about the frequency and type of attacks on health care workers and facilities is an essential first step toward holding the perpetrators accountable,” Rubenstein says.

The resolution calls on the Director-General “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.”

At a congressional briefing in March, Rubenstein noted a 2011 report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that over 1,800 people in 16 countries had been killed or wounded as a result of violence against health care services. In the intervening months concern among human rights groups has only increased due to rising attacks in Syria, Bahrain, Somalia and Pakistan, Rubenstein says.

"Health care services and the health workers who provide them are never more desperately needed, but never more vulnerable, than when violence convulses a society," Rubenstein says. “The Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition hopes that the WHO, in its role as health cluster lead, will adopt and begin implementing the resolution as quickly as possible.”

###More Information:Detailed World Health Assembly agenda item, with background: http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA65/A65_25-en.pdf

Leonard Rubenstein bio: http://www.bioethicsinstitute.org/mshome/?id=149

Report of the International Committee of the Red Cross: Health Care in Danger: Making the Case: http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/publication/p4072.htm

Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition: http://www.safeguardinghealth.org/

About the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of BioethicsOne of the largest centers of its kind in the world, the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics is the home for collaborative scholarship and teaching on the ethics of clinical practice, public health and biomedical science at Johns Hopkins University. Since 1995, the Institute has worked with governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations and private sector organizations to address and resolve ethical issues. Institute faculty members represent such disciplines as medicine, nursing, law, philosophy, public health and the social sciences. Their work helps anticipate and inform debates on complex moral challenges, discern ethically acceptable alternatives in medical, scientific and public health policy and help to prepare the next generation of bioethicists. More information is available at www.bioethicsinstitute.org.