This week there is a fascinating editorial that I almost skipped because the title didn’t grab my attention: “Ensuring Public Health Neutrality” (NEJM 2013; 368: 1073-1075).
This commentary provides background by recollecting Red Cross relief flights to Biafra being shot down by the Nigerian government. “In the minds of some people, ..these attacks were justified by another clear violation of humanitarian neutrality: on at least one occasion, a plane painted with the Red Cross insignia was actually carrying weapons.”
Fast-forward to January 6, 2013. 12 deans of U.S. schools of public health sent a letter to President Obama protesting the conduct of a sham vaccination campaign as part of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Apparently, the CIA hired a Pakistani surgeon to go house to house vaccinating children but also drawing back a little blood in the syringe in order to analyze the DNA. This ploy was not effective in the bin Laden compound as the surgeon’s team was kicked out.
So what are the consequences?
- Pakistan has expelled foreign staff of the international aid agency Save the Children (Sept 2012)
- Eight polio vaccination workers were killed (Dec 2012)
- U.N. has suspended its polio-eradication efforts in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of three countries where polio has not been eradicated (Nigeria and Afghanistan are the other two).
- This undermines vaccination in Pakistan where 150,000 children die of vaccine-preventable illness each year.
Using physicians in this manner violates the Hippocratic Oath: “Whatever house I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice.”
The authors note that “although some U.S. policymakers consider immediate national security concerns a higher priority than long-term global health efforts, the CIA’s false vaccination campaign in Pakistan may cause collateral damage with profound long-term implications for national security. If every aid worker..is suspected of being a spy, the children..of the world will no longer have protection against our greatest killers.”
Public health neutrality –a different twist to think about while you are watching “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Related links:
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