The World Health Organization (WHO) has denounced the most recent assault on a medical facility in a contentious city in Somalia’s Somaliland region, where scores of people—including medical personnel and patients—were murdered and injured.
The WHO reported that two ambulances were also destroyed during the conflict on Tuesday in Las Anod. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO representative for Somalia, said in a statement released Thursday evening in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, that “attacks on health care have devastating consequences going beyond the loss of life of health workers and the patients they might have saved.”
The facility has been struck five times since the unrest in Las Anoda began last year, according to the WHO.
Thousands of people will perish each year, according to Malik, not because they are the direct victims of disease but rather because healthcare facilities are inefficient and the environment is too unsafe for the provision of quality medical care.
Because of this, he stated, “I appeal to all to protect healthcare facilities and health workers and ensure that everyone has access to health care, regardless of their involvement in the conflict.
The families of the healthcare workers who were killed and hurt in this incident received the UN health agency’s heartfelt sympathies.
The WHO’s regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed Al-Mandhari, pleaded with all sides involved in armed conflict to uphold the neutrality of medical care and the medical community’s obligations under the duty of care.
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