EDITORIAL - Threatened workers

The month opened with reports that a Filipina nurse had been kidnapped on her way to work and raped in the Libyan capital Tripoli. The report prompted the Philippine government to speed up the evacuation of about 3,000 Filipinos working mostly as doctors and nurses in the strife-torn country.

Libyan authorities have reportedly pleaded with their foreign workers to stay, saying that the country’s public health system could collapse with the exodus. Health professionals who would risk being infected with potentially deadly viruses such as Ebola, however, cannot work in an environment where they are threatened with kidnapping, rape and death.

This has been the case in the conflict areas of Mindanao, where Abu Sayyaf bandits and their cohorts from other extremist groups have targeted not only teachers, Catholic priests and Christian missionaries but also health professionals. Americans Martin and Gracia Burnham were held for months by the Abu Sayyaf in the jungles of Basilan together with Filipina nurse Ediborah Yap. Martin and Ediborah did not survive the ordeal.

In Sulu, the Abu Sayyaf has attacked even a vehicle clearly marked with the Red Cross logo. Such attacks have turned away health workers from the conflict zones and made public health care even more inadequate in the areas where it is most needed.

Yesterday the World Health Organization called for an end to such attacks, saying these constituted a breach of the fundamental right to health. The WHO made the call on the eve of World Humanitarian Day, which is observed today as health workers, hospitals, clinics and ambulances continue to be the targets of violent attacks in the Central African Republic, Gaza, Iraq, Libya, South Sudan, Syria and other conflict zones.

The attacks have impeded treatment and measures to prevent the continuing spread of Ebola in West Africa, WHO officials said. Those responsible for the attacks will themselves suffer the consequences.