Attacks on health care are on track to hit a record high in 2023. Can it be stopped?

The year 2022 set a grim record — 1,989 attacks on health-care facilities and their personnel, the worst total number in the decade since the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition began its sobering count.

This year is on track to be even more devastating for the toll on health care. In many of the world's ongoing conflicts — like Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and now between Israel and Hamas — health care has been a target. The reasons for this may differ from conflict to conflict but the end result is an affront to international humanitarian law, written to protect health care in times of war.

Article 18 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states, "Civilian hospitals organized to give care to the wounded and sick, the infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties to the conflict." Article 19 continues, "The protection to which civilian hospitals are entitled shall not cease unless they are used to commit, outside their humanitarian duties, acts harmful to the enemy."

When attacks on health facilities or medical workers do happen — as they have repeatedly in these and other conflicts — the results are devastating. In addition, "part of [health workers'] mission is to provide a witness, a public health researcher at the University of Washington, now retired. In her view, this is one reason why health professionals can pose a threat to a military or militia. They can "undermine the credibility of the fighting force [and hold] them accountable in ways that legal entities seem not to be able to do," she says.