Geneva — To mark World Humanitarian Day on 19 August, WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issues a call to stop the intensifying attacks on healthcare workers, hospitals and other health services, which often offer the only hope for saving the lives of people caught up in the horror of needless conflict. The violent upheaval tearing Khartoum apart has forced many Sudanese people to flee for safety. The war’s impact on the capital’s health system has made it even more urgent for many families to take flight.
Attack’s on medical facilities in Khartoum in 2023 led to a shortage of drugs throughout the capital, which meant many chronically ill Sudanese could no longer find the medicines they needed. This is the new reality for millions affected by conflicts, and in vital need of healthcare, around the world, including health workers and other humanitarians themselves. In the past year alone, multiple attacks on Gaza’s hospitals have killed and injured hundreds, including health workers, and displaced people seeking refuge in what were thought to be safe havens.
Doctors and nurses have been murdered while striving to care for people displaced from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) city of Goma. Smoke billowed from Kyiv’s Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital in Ukraine following armed violence, and workers from the International Committee of the Red Cross were gunned down in Sudan’s restive Darfur region. Polio vaccinators have been fatally tar.
