‘Dehumanizing’: At least 64 health facilities attacked in Ukraine, says WHO

With the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine nearing a month now, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday confirmed that at least 64 attacks on health facilities in Ukraine had taken place since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

“WHO has now verified 64 attacks on health care since the start of the war, and we are in the process of verifying further attacks,” Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters in a media briefing on Wednesday.

“Attacks on health must stop. Health systems, facilities, and health workers are not and should not, [ever] be a target,” the WHO Director-General added.

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The WHO also shared health statistics on the hundreds of thousands of families displaced from the eastern European country, with Dr Mike Ryan, director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme explaining that 32% of displaced families had at least one person who was chronically ill, while 20% of displaced families had at least one person who was disabled.

Dr Ryan went on to critcise the state of affairs in Ukraine, saying that the war had created a situation wherein access to health facilities itself was becoming “a life-threatening experience.”

‘This is dehumanizing at a level that is very hard to explain. It is very hard to understand. It is very hard to even imagine what people are going through in this situation,” Dr Ryan said.

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“We have reached maybe for once in my lifetime an appropriate level of horror of what’s happening in Ukraine and particularly what’s happening in Mariupol. And I hope that is the new level of horror we will express in all of these situations around the world from now on,” he added.

Dr Ryan’s reference to the besieged port city of Mariupol came days after Russia carried out indiscriminate bombing in the city, attacking maternity wards and theatres housing innocent women and children.

In view of indiscriminate Russian bombardment on Ukraine’s cities, the international community has started various probes into alleged war crimes in the eastern European country.