LONDON: The targeting of medical facilities in war should be categorized as “healthocide,” academics have said, amid a surge in such attacks in recent years.
Most deliberate attacks on health services have taken place in Gaza since 2023, but other strikes have been recorded in Lebanon, Syria, Sudan and Ukraine, The Guardian reported. Individual medical staff have also been deliberately targeted.
International humanitarian law has explicitly promoted the longstanding principle of medical neutrality, which prohibits attacks on healthcare workers and facilities during war, enabling doctors and surgeons to perform their work on anyone in need.
Dr. Joelle Abi-Rached and his colleagues at the American University of Beirut submitted a commentary to the British Medical Journal warning of the surge in the targeting of health services.
“Both in Gaza and Lebanon, healthcare facilities have not only been directly targeted, but access to care has also been obstructed, including incidents where ambulances have been prevented from reaching the injured, or deliberately attacked,” they wrote.
