Healthocide: war against healthcare – The Hindu

In an article published in the journal BMJ Global Health on August 5, researchers from the American University of Beirut in Lebanon coined a new word: healthocide. The authors wrote that the word captures a new, extreme pattern of violence against health systems that routine talk of “attacks on healthcare” does not capture. Instead, they continued, today’s deliberate, large-scale destruction of whole health ecosystems in conflict zones such as Gaza needs to be called healthocide.

If the word is applied to recent wars, it could include a coordinated strategy to kill clinicians, bomb hospitals, block ambulances, and dismantle supply chains in order to erase a population’s capacity for care. According to the authors, healthocide also frames these acts as being akin to genocide, i.e. the intentional destruction of a collective good essential to life and dignity, and thus demands stronger legal protections.

The authors also state that physicians and educators must document violations, push governments to enforce international humanitarian law, and to keep themselves from being complicit in healthocides. In effect, by naming the phenomenon, the authors have sought to galvanise the medical community against the increasing weaponisation of healthcare.

Not all experts are convinced a new word is necessary. For example, Len Rubenstein, chair of the group Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, told NPR he doesn’t think “it adds [to] what we already understand about the sanctity of health care and war.” On the other hand, University of Greenwich global health expert Amal Elamin said the word “reinforces the fact that the targeted attacks on health care settings and health workers is no longer an isolated precedent.”