GENEVA: Nearly 230 health workers have been killed in Lebanon since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 7 attacks last year, the World Health Organization said Friday.
In total, the UN health agency said there had been 187 attacks on healthcare in Lebanon in the more than 13 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict.
Between October 7, 2023 and November 18 this year, “we have 226 deaths and 199 injuries in total,” Abdinasir Abubakar, the WHO representative in Lebanon, said via video link from Beirut.
He said “almost 70 percent” of these had occurred since the tensions escalated into all-out war in September.
Saying this was “an extremely worrying pattern,” he stressed that “depriving civilians of access to lifesaving care and targeting health providers is a breach of international humanitarian law”.
Abubakar said “a hallmark of the conflict in Lebanon is how destructive it has been to health care”, highlighting that 47 percent of these attacks “have proven fatal to at least one health worker or patient” – the highest percentage of any active conflict today.
Lebanon says 22 killed in Israeli strikes
By comparison, Abubakar said that only 13.3 percent of attacks on healthcare globally had fatal outcomes during the same period, pointing to data from a range of conflict situations, including Ukraine, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territory.
He suggested the high percentage of fatal attacks on healthcare in Lebanon might be due to the fact that “more ambulances have been targeted”.
“And whenever the ambulance is targeted, actually, then you will have three, four or five paramedics … killed”.
The conflict has dealt a harsh blow to overall healthcare in Lebanon, which was already reeling from a string of dire crises in recent years.
The WHO warned that 15 of Lebanon’s 153 hospitals have now ceased to operate or are only partially functioning
Hanan Balkhy, WHO’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean region, stressed that “attacks on health care of this scale cripple a health system when those whose lives depend on it need it the most”.
“Beyond the loss of life, the death of health workers is a loss of years of investment and a crucial resource to a fragile country going forward.”