Libya

Over the past few weeks, the Libya has been affected by unrest and violence. WHO has been closely monitoring and assessing the situation for health-related implications, as well as providing necessary health-related aid, services and support.

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During the period from 1970 to 2009, more than 77.5 million people in the region were affected by natural disasters alone. Currently, there are over 11.6 million internally displaced persons ((IDPs) in and at least 5 million refugees originating from EMR, due, in great part, to conflict and natural disasters.

The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) has experienced, over the past two decades in particular, a number of complex emergencies as well as large scale natural disasters. 15 of the 22 Member States (roughly 85% of the Region’s population) have suffered in protracted conflict situations. Because of the burden of these crises, the world’s highest proportion of internally displaced persons still lives in EMR. A number of major earthquakes, floods, droughts, cyclones, conflicts and civil strife, wars, sanctions and civil unrest have contributed to death, displacement, and disability. The effects of war on health are multifaceted and range from striking effects such as the wounded, the dead, the epidemics and the famine, to less visible ones including disorganization of health services, and in some cases, their total annihilation.

The Region currently houses arguably some of the most challenging and longest running complex humanitarian emergencies at the global level: Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia and Sudan. In the past year or so alone, Afghanistan, Djibouti, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are examples of countries that have experienced at least one of, if not both, conflict or natural disaster. In Iraq, with the on-going violence and insecurity coupled with previous humanitarian needs, almost a third of the country is cut off from essential health services. The conflict in the occupied Palestinian territory has been ongoing for over 6 decades and still 80% of the population living in Gaza depends on humanitarian assistance. Due to the ongoing crises in Somalia and Afghanistan , these 2 EMR countries still have the worst national records of infant and maternal mortality indicators in the world.
 
Just in the past year, the EMR witnessed arguably the largest human displacement since Rwanda, of over 2.5 million people in northern and northwestern Pakistan within a period of just a few weeks. In Yemen too, insurgency in the North displaced an additional 250,000 people adding to the complex humanitarian emergencies in the region.  Renewed fighting in Southern Sudan drove 350,000-400,000 away from their homes, leaving about five million in need of humanitarian assistance – this on top of the existing burden of refugees from neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), making it a largely-ignored crisis actually faring worse than Darfur at this time. The expulsion of INGOs from Darfur created a critical health availability gap.
 
Acute drought in Djibouti and Syrian Arab Republic further stretched thin the already-limited resources of partners and host governments in the Region. The year 2010 not only marks 18 years of conflict for Somalia, but also heralds the first generation of Somali children who come of age without ever having lived through a single year of peace.