UN expert calls on States to immediately stop targeting and killing health and care workers

GENEVA – States must stop targeting and killing health and care workers, and immediately release all healthworkers being detained, harassed and tortured, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng said today.

In her fifth report to the Human Rights Council, Mofokeng focused on health and care workers as defenders of the right to health and explored their ability to support the enjoyment of the right to health and related human rights.

“Conflict zones are becoming ‘no human rights zones’, where doctors, paramedics are being persecuted and targeted for doing life-saving work,” Mofokeng said.

“Medical facilities are being attacked to such an extent that injured victims have no access to care or appropriate treatment and therefore, no chance of survival.”

Mofokeng’s report said that health inequities and compounding forms of discrimination have a disproportionate impact on certain workers who have historically been made vulnerable, as they experience and participate in the workplace. It also stresses that States have an obligation to provide healthcare that is available, accessible, acceptable and of good quality and to eliminate both formal and substantive discrimination for both its workers and patients alike.

In her report, the Special Rapporteur seeks to provide recommendations on the protection of health and mental well-being, safety, remuneration, and fairness in the workplace so that they may deliver quality healthcare services.

“Health and care workers are key to a human centred healthcare system that ensures health facilities, goods, and services without discrimination,” the Special Rapporteur said. “Health and care workers continue to serve in systems that expose them to harassment and abuse.”

“There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift to reimagine health systems that are sustainable and equitable and provide for dignified and compassionate ways in which humans crucial for the functioning of health systems are valued and cared for,” she said.

Mofokeng called on Member States to respect and protect the right to health and its underlying determinants, specifically infrastructure and personnel and noted the importance of the practice of medicine as a tool for the promotion of human rights.