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The deliberate destruction of well being providers and programs as an act of struggle needs to be termed “healthocide” and medical practitioners ought to name out and stand agency in opposition to this weaponization of well being care, insists a thought-provoking commentary printed within the open-access journal BMJ World Well being.
Silence implies complicity and approval, and undermines worldwide humanitarian regulation in addition to medical {and professional} ethics, say Dr. Joelle Abi-Rached and colleagues of the American College of Beirut, Lebanon.
Though they seek advice from different conflicts in El Salvador, Ukraine, Sudan, and Syria, the authors focus totally on the influence of armed battle on well being care in Lebanon and Gaza.
Information from Lebanon’s Ministry of Public Well being present that between 8 October 2023 and 27 January 2025, 217 well being care staff have been killed by the Israel Protection Forces; 177 ambulances have been broken; 68 assaults on hospitals have been recorded; and 237 assaults on emergency medical providers came about, they are saying.
Israel’s army operations in Gaza since October 7, 2023 have resulted in at the least 986 medical staff’ deaths: 165 medical doctors; 260 nurses; 184 well being associates; 76 pharmacists; 300 administration and help employees; and 85 civil protection staff, they add.
“Both in Gaza and Lebanon, health care 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,” word the authors.
“What is becoming clear is that health care workers and facilities are no longer afforded the protection guaranteed by international humanitarian law,” they add.
But confronted with such wanton destruction, medical doctors have accomplished little, the authors recommend.
“These attacks have been met with astounding silence or, at best, terse and often belated statements from American, European, or Israeli medical associations, professional groups, and journals,” they level out.
“Are medical doctors ready to forsake the principle of medical neutrality, first forged amidst the carnage of 19th century wars and profoundly reshaped following the liberation of Nazi death camps in 1945? And if so, at what cost?” they ask.
“As difficult as this question is, it is one that physicians must address as they grapple with the normalization of health care’s weaponization in a world where warfare has changed dramatically, marked by the use of artificial intelligence for mass killing, the reliance on drones and killing robots, the deployment of internationally banned weapons, which carry devastating public health and ecological consequences, and, of course, the looming threat of nuclear weapons,” they write.
The “normalization” of well being care assaults has elevated alarmingly over the previous few years, say the authors. “But what we are witnessing today is more pernicious than mere normalization of such attacks, something that could be described as ‘healthocide’: the deliberate killing and/or destruction of health services and systems for ideological purposes.”
Normalizing or excusing healthocide units a harmful precedent, the authors argue, because it emboldens future violators and erodes the precept of medical neutrality, which is crucial for making certain neutral and humane care throughout battle.
“Medical neutrality is not ‘apolitical’; for us it means standing with humanity, social justice, and health-enabling policies,” they add.
The actions medical practitioners should take embody advocating for the enforcement of justice and worldwide humanitarian regulation; and documenting and exposing abuses to medical neutrality by each state and non-state actors, insist the authors.
“Rather than passively observe the erosion and normalization of the weaponization of health and health care, [we call] for critical reflection and decisive action, underscoring that silence implies complicity, approval, or the toleration of double-standards—all of which stand in clear opposition to international humanitarian law and medical deontology [ethics],” they conclude.
Extra data:
Healthocide and medical neutrality: a name for motion and reflection, BMJ World Well being (2025). DOI: 10.1136/bmjgh-2024-018656
Offered by
British Medical Journal
Quotation:
‘Healthocide’ coined to explain deliberate assaults on well being care as acts of struggle (2025, August 5)
retrieved 5 August 2025
from https://medicalxpress.com/information/2025-08-healthocide-coined-deliberate-health-war.html
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