7,400 attacks on health care documented since 2018: WHO

GENEVA

The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said that it has documented 7,400 attacks on health care in conflict zones in the last seven years.

"That's an average of three attacks per day on health care," Rick Brennan, WHO regional emergencies director for the Eastern Mediterranean region, told a UN briefing in Geneva, adding that the agency also documented 2,400 deaths associated with those attacks - an average of one death.

"The impact on the delivery of health services and humanitarian settings is enormous," he stressed.

"Of the 7400 attacks that we've documented, not one person has been held to account," he lamented, drawing attention to the impunity and the neglect of international humanitarian law.

He called for a global alliance on the protection of health and conflict and said: "The bleakness is the fact that people with the power to make the changes are failing the most vulnerable people dramatically."