Violence against healthcare must end
Violence against healthcare must end
In the first six months of 2025, the WHO’s Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care recorded 671 attacks on healthcare in 15 different countries, resulting in 560 injuries and 1104 deaths.
The nature of attacks varies greatly, including assault with individual weapons, violence with heavy weapons during armed conflict, sexual or psychological violence, and the destruction of equipment, transport, or facilities. The impact affects the healthcare workforce, patients, infrastructure, and supplies, all of which are subject to persistent acts of violence in all regions of the world.
Health systems can only function when both workforces and facilities are secure and protected. The results of a global survey conducted in 2021 by the ICN, the ICRC, the IHF, and the WMA revealed an increase in reported incidents since the COVID-19 pandemic began. All acts of violence against healthcare have a human cost – physical, mental, and psychosocial – for healthcare personnel, for patients and their family members, and for health outcomes. Year-on-year since 2023, the recorded attacks against healthcare are increasingly deadly.
The harm caused by damage to healthcare facilities also contributes to unhealthy environments. Infectious and toxic substances may contaminate the air, water, or soil. The consequences of these attacks can delay care, increase illness and demands on health systems, and make it harder to rebuild health services. The damage may last for years and affect entire communities.
Since 2015, the IHF has been part of the ICRC’s Health Care in Danger (HCiD) initiative to support global and national efforts aimed at ensuring safe access to healthcare services in times of armed conflict and other emergencies, and specifically at improving the safety of ambulances, healthcare personnel, and facilities.
The IHF reiterates its position that health facilities, the workforce, patients and their families are never to be targeted. Attacks on hospitals, healthcare workers, and ambulances are not acceptable – no matter the context, no matter the reason. Healthcare is not a target. It is a violation of International Humanitarian Law, and we firmly stand against it.
