Lebanese doctors confirmed in a scientific comment that the deliberate destruction of health services and systems should be named as a work of war with “healthy extermination”.
Doctors indicated that medical professionals should condemn the use of health care as a weapon and stand firmly against it.
Dr. Joel Abi Rashid and his colleagues at the American University of Beirut said in the commentary published in the “BMG Global Health” magazine on August 5 that silence means collusion and approval, and undermines international humanitarian law, as well as medical and professional ethics.
The authors of the comment referred to the conflicts in El Salvador, Ukraine and Syria, and they focused mainly on the impact of armed conflict on health care in Lebanon and Gaza.
The data of the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health showed that between October 8, 2023 and January 27, 2025, 217 workers in the field of health care were killed by the Israeli occupation army, 177 ambulances were damaged, 68 attacks were recorded on hospitals, and 237 attacks occurred on medical emergency services.
The Israeli military operations in Gaza have resulted in the death of at least 986 medical workers: 165 doctors, 260 nurses, 184 health assistants, 76 pharmacists, 300 administration and support employees, and 85 civil defense personnel.
The authors, according to the Yorik Alrt website, notes that “in Gaza and Lebanon not only targeted health care facilities, but also hindered the possibility of obtaining care, including accidents in which ambulances were prevented from reaching the injured, or were subjected to deliberate attacks.”
They added, “What has become clear is that health care workers and its facilities are no longer the protection guaranteed by international humanitarian law.”
They condemned the amazing silence in the face of this brutal destruction, as the doctors did not make a little effort to deny this targeting, and they see that it was “amazingly silent or at best with brief and late statements often from medical associations, professional groups and American, European and Israeli magazines.”
Medical neutrality
“Are the doctors ready to abandon the principle of medical neutrality? If so, at what price?”
“Despite the difficulty of this question, doctors must treat it while they are struggling with the normalization of health care in a world where wars have changed significantly, and were distinguished by the use of artificial intelligence in mass killing, relying on drones and deadly robots, and spreading internationally banned weapons, which carry severe consequences on public health and the environment, and of course the imminent threat of nuclear weapons.”
The authors explain that the “normalization” of health care attacks has increased disturbing during the past few years, but what we are witnessing today is more harmful than just normalizing these attacks, which can be described as “healthy extermination”, that is, deliberate killing and/ or the destruction of health services and systems for ideological purposes.
They pointed out that the normalization or justification of healthy extermination is a dangerous precedent, as it encourages the violations in the future and undermines the principle of medical neutrality, which is essential to ensure fair and human care during conflicts. Medical neutrality is not “not political”, as it is for researchers that means standing alongside humanity, social justice and policies that support health.
The authors emphasize that the measures that medical workers must take include the call for the implementation of justice and international humanitarian law, and to document and reveal violations of medical neutrality by governmental and non -governmental actors.
They concluded by saying, “Instead of standing the negative spectator’s position on the erosion and normalization of health and health care a weapon that calls for critical thinking and take decisive measures, stressing that silence means collusion, approval or tolerance with duplication of standards, all of which are clearly contradicting with international humanitarian law and the ethics of the medical profession.”