Attacks on health workers in conflict zones at highest level ever – report

Attacks on health workers, hospitals and clinics in conflict zones jumped 25% last year to their highest level on record, a new report has found.

While the increase was largely driven by new wars in Gaza and Sudan, continuing conflicts such as Ukraine and Myanmar also saw such attacks continue “at a relentless pace,” the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition said.

Researchers recorded more than 2,500 incidents of “violence against or obstruction of healthcare” in 2023, including the killing or kidnapping of health workers and the bombing, looting and occupation of hospitals.

The coalition called for national and international prosecutions of “war crimes and crimes against humanity involving attacks on the wounded and sick, health facilities and health workers.”

Its report highlighted cases of attacks on children’s hospitals and sites running immunisation campaigns, leaving people vulnerable to infectious diseases. It also warned of a new trend in which drones armed with explosive weapons are used to target health facilities.

Leonard Rubenstein, of the Johns Hopkins school of public health, who chairs the coalition, said violence inflicted on healthcare workers and facilities had “reached appalling levels”. The report included examples where workers had been deliberately targeted, and others where combatants were reckless or indifferent to the harm caused, he said. “The lack of restraint we are seeing, from the beginning of conflicts, suggests to me that the law on protecting healthcare has had no meaning to combatants.”

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Source: The Guardian, 22 May 2024