Peace through Health and Medical Education: First Steps in Inclination of Healthcare Workers Toward Conflict-Preventive Activities

Abstract

Background: The number of deaths and disabilities due to all types of violence has increased; violence and especially war heavily affect public and individual health and all sectors, including the health sector, are responsible for making attempts to take part in mitigation of war effects. However, "peace through health" has not been so far included globally in the curriculum of basic medical schools. The study aims to prepare data on responsibilities that could be devolved to health sector, and the importance and role of education for those health workers who are willing to participate in the peace field Methods: A systematic search in Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and ERIC was conducted looking for relevant documents following combination of the key terms: peace, health and education. Results: Health professionals consider war as a serious contagious disease that needs to be prevented like any other diseases. Prevention maneuvers at the primordial, primary, secondary and tertiary stages are important tasks that can be carried out by health professionals; there is an increasing demand for establishment of some courses; the roles and the manner of performing these tasks are not part of medical curriculum and for better execution of these roles, peace through health courses should be developed and then integrated to the current curriculum of health-related universities. Conclusion: The work of developing peace through health courses has been started before and it will continue until it completely becomes an accepted global course.