Israeli attacks on Lebanon’s health system echo the targeted destruction of healthcare in Gaza, health activists and experts warn. Since early March, at least 42 health workers – including paramedics, doctors, and nurses – have been killed in these assaults, while dozens of health centers and hospitals have been damaged.

“This is not only a military escalation,” the People’s Health Movement (PHM) stated. “It is a health catastrophe … Health infrastructure is being destroyed. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Health workers are on the frontlines of a crisis they did not create and cannot sustain alone.”

Read more: Israeli destruction of Gaza’s healthcare is a blueprint for future imperialist wars

The health crisis has already proven to have broad impacts. In addition to health workers being targeted, injured, and killed, others have been trapped in hospitals in areas under direct attack, as described by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). “Combined with ground attacks and repetitive airstrikes targeting civilian infrastructure such as bridges in South Lebanon, these actions are effectively isolating large cities and numerous villages south of the Litani river from the rest of the country,” MSF said on March 24.

Over a million people have been forcibly and violently displaced by Israeli attacks, but many have also been unable to seek safety elsewhere – remaining exposed to the combined danger of physical assault and health services struggling to maintain capacity. In a recent interview, surgeon Ghassan Abu Sitta described how this was affecting children – 121 of whom have been killed since early March. “Because of the economic collapse and previous war on Lebanon, not as many families have been able to seek refuge elsewhere,” Abu Sitta said. “They neither have the money to rent elsewhere or somewhere to go. So we’re seeing these kids being wounded inside their homes.”

Meanwhile, those who managed to leave their homes face danger from living conditions in overcrowded shelters, which, as World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned last week, “have the potential to rapidly increase health risks.” Access to care for patients with chronic conditions, including cancer, has been completely disrupted, with many unable to foresee when and where they will access their next treatment.

“I fled with nothing and I have nowhere to go,” a displaced leukemia patient told MSF. “I had hopes I almost beat cancer. Now, I spend nights in a tent in a park, and I don’t know where I’ll find my next dose of medication or how I’ll continue my treatment.”

Read more: Researchers warn of “de-healthification” in Palestine as infections spread in Gaza

As in the case of the genocide in Gaza, many health organizations warn attacks on healthcare break international law – yet Israel’s disregard for international law during its efforts to “de-healthify” Palestine and other illegal assaults in the region signals that warnings alone won’t prevent these crimes, and health activists must continue mobilizing to stop them.

Similarly to mobilizations for Gaza’s healthcare, PHM emphasizes these struggles must recognize the context in which Lebanon’s health system is being attacked. The assaults, PHM warns, “occur within a broader context of US–Israel imperialism across the region, including aggression on Palestine, Yemen, and Iran.”

“Across these contexts, imperial and genocidal violence has led to the killing of civilians and health workers, mass displacement, and the collapse of essential health services,” the network added. “We refuse complicity institutional, political or professional in the normalization of this imperialist war and violence.”

“PHM reaffirms that the right to health cannot be separated from the right to life, to sovereignty, self-determination and freedom from occupation and war.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a fortnightly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch*. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click* here.

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