Targeting medics and hospitals in acts of war should be called \u201chealthocide\u201d, academics have urged, amid an increase in such attacks in recent years.<\/p>\n
Health services are increasingly deliberately under attack and medics are facing violence and abuse in conflict zones around the world \u2013 in particular in Gaza<\/a>, but also in Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan, Syria and El Salvador.<\/p>\n This is despite the longstanding principle under international humanitarian law of medical neutrality, which protects healthcare workers and facilities during armed conflict and civil unrest, enabling them to provide medical care to those in need.<\/p>\n In a commentary published in the British Medical Journal, Dr Joelle Abi-Rached and colleagues of the American University of Beirut, Lebanon wrote: \u201cBoth 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is becoming clear is that healthcare workers and facilities are no longer afforded the protection guaranteed by international humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n The authors cite data from Israel\u2019s full-scale invasion of Gaza, which has resulted in at least 986 medical workers\u2019 deaths. Recent figures from the Healthcare Workers Watch show<\/a> that 28 doctors from Gaza<\/a> are being held inside Israeli prisons without any charge, eight them senior consultants in surgery, orthopaedics, intensive care, cardiology and paediatrics.<\/p>\n The World Health Organization\u2019s representative for the West Bank and Gaza stated<\/a> at the UN security council in January that hospitals in Gaza had \u201cturned into battlegrounds\u201d, while the healthcare system was being \u201csystematically dismantled and driven to the brink of collapse\u201d.<\/p>\n Healthcare workers in Gaza who were among the hundreds detained by the Israeli military who spoke to the Guardian for the Doctors in Detention<\/a> project in early 2025 believed they were targeted because they were doctors.<\/p>\n They shared harrowing testimonies of torture, beatings, starvation and humiliation, including being constantly beaten and kept in stress positions for hours at a time, and having loud music played nonstop to prevent them from sleeping. They were also denied food, water, showers and changes of clothes.<\/p>\n Lebanon\u2019s ministry of public health has found that between 8 October 2023 and 27 January 2025, 217 healthcare workers were killed by the Israel Defense Forces, 177 ambulances were damaged, and 68 attacks on hospitals were recorded.<\/p>\n Figures<\/a> from the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition recorded 3,623 attacks on or obstruction of healthcare in 2024, the highest number ever documented.<\/p>\n These attacks included doctors, nurses and allied healthcare professionals who were beaten, arbitrarily arrested, kidnapped, tortured and killed; patients shot in their beds or dragged to detention centres; and hospitals that were deliberately bombed and raided.<\/p>\n The authors of the BMJ article are calling on doctors to \u201cforsake the principle of medical neutrality\u201d and speak out against \u201chealthocide\u201d or face emboldening future violators. This might include advocating for enforcement of justice and international humanitarian law, and documenting and exposing abuses of medical neutrality.<\/p>\n Writing in the Guardian<\/a>, Maarten van der Heijden, a global health lawyer and researcher at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, noted that the international humanitarian laws, the Geneva conventions<\/a>, leave \u201cconsiderable room for interpretation and forgoes accountability\u201d, allowing hospitals to be bombed if it is considered \u201charmful to the enemy<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n The British Medical Association\u2019s medical ethics committee chair, Dr Andrew Green, said: \u201cIn recent years, doctors have been devastated to see the appalling increase in attacks on healthcare, patients and staff in conflict zones, and the disregard for medical neutrality and international humanitarian law.\u201d<\/p>\n He noted that although there were examples around the world, Gaza was the most severe given that \u201cthe population is both at risk of imminent famine, while health systems necessary to look after the starving have been systematically obliterated and health workers killed and arbitrarily detained.\u201d<\/p>\n He urged international medical associations, NGOs, governments and the UN to \u201ccall out when we see human and health rights abused, and hold those breaking international humanitarian law accountable\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThose with power must use all levers at their disposal to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid and urgent healthcare to the world\u2019s most vulnerable. One clear step would be the establishment of a UN special rapporteur on the protection of health in armed conflict,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n