The shameful litany of attacks on medical facilities and workers continues to grow
Those who save the lives of others need protection themselves. At least 415 attacks against health workers and facilities have been carried out since last year’s coup in Myanmar, according to a report published recently. It has become one of the most dangerous places on Earth for medics, with half of all such global attacks in the first six months of last year. The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has seen the large-scale destruction of facilities. With the crisis deepening in Sudan, last month the UN reported 15 healthcare attacks since November.
It is over a century and a half since the agreement of the first Geneva convention, an international prohibition on attacking the sick and wounded, assaulting or punishing those who offer them healthcare, and inflicting violence on hospitals and ambulances. Those protections have since been broadened and strengthened repeatedly.
