Attacks on Health

The toll of violence against health on the health workforce: Characteristics, impacts and responses Monday 3 April 2023 15:00-16:30 CEST Moderator: Rohini Haar Speakers: Aula Abbara, Larissa Fast, Naser AlMhawish, Christina Wille Advance registration is required. Visit: https://www.who.int/teams/health-workforce/about/5thglobalforum-hrh/ #ProtectInvestTogether

This report – a joint undertaking among eyeWitness to Atrocities (eyeWitness), Insecurity Insight, the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and the Ukrainian Healthcare Center (UHC) – documents the staggering toll that Russia’s aggression has had on Ukraine’s health care system since February 2022. Using 10 case studies and a joint dataset of attacks, this report shows how Russia appears to be violating international humanitarian law by deliberately and indiscriminately targeting Ukraine’s health care system as part of a broader attack on its civilian population and infrastructure. As the report details, the apparent targeting of the health care system is carried out through a variety of means, including: (1) attacks on health care facilities, (2) attacks on ambulances, (3) destruction of critical health infrastructure and theft of supplies, and (4) assaults, torture, and ill-treatment of health workers, including doctors, nurses, and paramedics.

Thirty-five doctors and 12 intensive care beds remain in east Aleppo. Doctors and health facilities are struggling under extreme resource shortages, fuel shortages, and overwhelming patient loads as the siege continues.

A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)-supported medic based in a small town northwest of Idlib city, Syria, explains the fear permeating his daily life, and the aftermath of a strike on a school in March 2015:

In the early hours of 3 October, rockets slammed into a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing at least 14 health workers and injuring 37. An MSF clinic in the southern Yemen city of Taiz was bombed on 2 December, injuring 9 people, including 2 MSF staff. Since 2012, almost 60% of hospitals in Syria have been partially or completely destroyed, and more than half of the country’s health workers have fled or been killed.