W.H.O. warns of Surging Attacks on Medical Sites in Ukraine

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W.H.O. warns of Surging Attacks on Medical Sites in Ukraine

Angela Chakraborty

A brutal missile attack on Kyiv’s Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital on Monday (08-07-2024) has raised concerns over the surging attack on Ukraine’s medical facilities and healthcare workers.

The World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) has issued a warning of a rise in such assaults in 2024.The latest figures of World Health Organisation reveal that there have been over 200 attacks on medical institutions in Ukraine in the first half of 2024, leading to 25 deaths and leaving atleast 120 injured.

This trend marks a significant rise from the previous year, which witnessed 350 attacks, resulting in 22 deaths and 117 injuries.

The recent attack on Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital, which killed 2 people at the hospital, including a doctor, injured 50 others, including eight children and damaging several departments of the hospital, has sparked international outrage and condemnation from notable countries including Japan, United States, France and China. The strike on the hospital is an outrageous violation of international humanitarian law, which protects healthcare workers and facilities under Geneva Convention.

Volodymyr Zhovnir, cardiac surgeon, anaesthesiologist, activist and Director of Okhmatdyt, Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital, said each year the hospital treats around 80,000 children, and most of them are cancer and blood disease patients.  Describing the 8 July attack on the healthcare facility, he said that at 9:52 a.m., when air raid sirens sounded, the medical team began evacuating patients to the bombshell shelter. 

He added, “Children were on drips, on dialysis, in intensive care”, and three heart surgeries were in progress, the pausing of which would have threatened lives. “At 10:42 a.m. we felt a powerful explosion”, he said, adding “The ground shook, and the walls trembled.  Both children and adults screamed and cried from fear” as a missile hit the intensive care department and a therapy department for chronic intoxications. 

“The floors collapsed, and we could hear people crying out for help from beneath the rubble”, he said.  600 patients had to be evacuated and the hospital’s traumatology department and toxicology building were completely shattered.  A part of Ukraine’s only oncological laboratory was destroyed, he added, and medical services in various departments had to be suspended.

The representative of Ukraine stated that it has become a custom for the Russian Federation to commemorate its presidency in the Council with brutal war crimes, adding “the Chair’s seat is already soaked with blood.”  On 8 July, Russia intentionally targeted “perhaps the most vulnerable and defenceless group in any society — children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses”, he said.

Okhmatdyt Hospital was just one of many targets in the heavy missile strike which hit Kyiv and other cities on 8 July, he said, noting that the Russian Federation launched 38 missiles, attacking almost 100 civilian sites.

The representative of the Russian Federation, Council President for July, spoke on behalf of his nation to highlight various analyses of his country’s alleged strike on the children’s hospital, which demonstrated that it was a missile of the Ukrainian air defence. He stated that this propaganda falls into the narrative of the Bucha or Mariupol hospital provocations.  Ukrainian air defence missiles often go off-target, as demonstrated by numerous previous disasters.

Even though Russia denies carrying out deliberate strikes on civilians, the evidences of missile fragments retrieved from under the hospital seem to suggest otherwise. Verified footages, pictures and eyewitness of the missile’s flight trajectory indicate that the hospital was the target of a deliberate attack.

Hospitals and other medical institutions have been the repeated target of a disturbing trend of attacks on healthcare infrastructure during the Ukrainian crisis. Christopher Stokes from Doctors Without Borders emphasized the challenges faced by medical professionals by citing the example of a Kherson emergency room that was shut down due to continuous bombings.

Uliana Poltavets from Physicians for Human Rights, a witness to the devastating explosion in Kyiv, recalls the ruthless cycle of violence that has devastated Ukraine since the war’s inception in February 2022. The conflict began with an assault on a maternity home in Mariupol, and three years on, children are still the ones who suffer the most.

While the war continues to intensify, healthcare workers and medical facilities remain vulnerable to the attacks. The International community must intervene immediately to safeguard Ukraine’s healthcare infrastructure and ensure the safety of medical professionals and patients, and thus protecting the fundamental right to healthcare in times of crisis.

11-07-2024

Angela Chakraborty is a student of Communication & Journalism, Gauhati University

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