Ukrainian health care is a frequent target of Russian violence. The bombing of the children’s hospital in Mariupol on March 9 was not an incident, but one of several attacks on hospitals. At least 111 hospitals and other healthcare institutions have now been affected in 125 attacks, the World Health Organization reported. 73 people were killed and 51 people were injured.
The verification process will take a few days, and the number of hospitals affected will have increased further. The WHO has not released the exact locations of the attacks for security reasons.
Even now that the Russians have partly withdrawn from the north of Ukraine, hospitals are destroyed daily, according to the Ukrainian government. The battle in the Donbas is intensifying. The WHO confirms that there are about a thousand hospitals in the areas where fierce fighting is now going on. Many hospitals are without electricity and supplies of tools and medicines are quickly dwindling. In addition, the Ukrainian Ministry of Education reports that 928 schools have been severely damaged or destroyed.
Since 2019, the WHO has been systematically keeping track of attacks on healthcare in war zones worldwide. “Attacks on health care are a violation of human rights,” WHO director Tedros Ghebreyesus told the UN Security Council in March. He believes that the attention for affected healthcare institutions in Ukraine is completely justified, but he asked world leaders not to lose sight of the dire state of healthcare elsewhere.
In 2022 alone, hospitals or healthcare workers have been attacked in 12 different conflict zones. In Sudan, security forces regularly raid hospitals in search of protesters; they use tear gas and shoot at patients and healthcare workers. In Syria, hundreds of hospitals have been bombed in recent years, millions of residents have no access to medical care.