The immoral and illegal business as usual of targeting health professionals and health facilities

Our research paper this month considers the role of household size in transmission of SARS-Cov-2 ¹ . After two years of the pandemic, what have we really learned? ² We also consider how to combat sexism in medicine ³ , as well as the value of role models in professional development ⁴ . We contemplate the early days of medical statistics ⁵ , and the end of career temptation to turn our experiences into the written word ⁶ . The latest article in our series on health and education reminds us that teachers are a vital part of the health workforce ⁷ .

This month’s JRSM is very much business as usual; doctors, researchers, and policy makers going about their work. The NHS may be understaffed and patients waiting too long for care, primary care may be in crisis, public health might be decimated, but we can heal, research, consider, and complain. Even in the prevailing adverse circumstances, those opportunities remain a privilege.

I say this because the events in Ukraine remind us that many of our colleagues are not able to enjoy those privileges. A privilege, if we can call it that, was for health professionals to be protected in times of conflict, and in return health professionals provide care to friend and foe, believing in a duty to protect life and alleviate suffering. International law and conventions support that moral duty.

But the calculus has changed. Health professionals, health facilities, and patients, are now targeted by aggressors, as Russia has done in Ukraine. This is an illegal and immoral act. Unfortunately, it is an illegal act without redress. Russia did the same in Syria. But Russia is not alone in attacking health professionals and health facilities, although it is probably the most prominent as a permanent member of the United Nations security council. In war, attacking doctors and hospitals is now business as usual.

Attacking health professionals, health facilities, and vulnerable populations is a norm that attracts toothless verbal rebukes but is quickly forgotten once the dust of war settles. The question for politicians and medical leaders, and their governments and medical organisations, is what will you do to hold to account those who are responsible for these crimes against humanity? Anything less is tacit endorsement and an abdication of responsibility.