After the recent attacks on a hospital in Aleppo, Syria—which contained the city’s main pediatric center, an emergency room, and an intensive care unit and operating room—the sanctity of medical neutrality has come into question. With at least 34 fatalities, the strike marked yet another assault against the formerly unquestionable right of healthcare workers to care for the sick and the injured regardless of political context. Approximately 200,000 Syrians are thought to have succumbed to what are normally treatable, if chronic, conditions such as diabetes due to the lack of proper medical resources.
Graphic retrieved from Doctors Without Borders website.
The beacon of hope provided by medical neutrality is fragile, kept intact only on the condition that both sides of the conflict uphold the principles of noninterference associated with medical neutrality. Medical services such as Doctors Without Borders are not permitted to discriminate against patients based on politics, race, or any other factor, the exchange is that the conflicting forces allow medical care to continue unimpeded.
The violation of medical neutrality—as in the case of the recent bombings of hospitals in Syria—is normally considered a war crime. Despite the high standing of this international humanitarian law, the war crimes committed in Syria have not as of yet been accounted for by the global community. This lack of recognition for humanitarian medical organizations such as Doctors Without Borders is not helped by the global population’s own lack of outrage at the recent events in Syria. Some estimates tell of the imprisonment of 600 physicians in addition to the death of 100 physicians, yet public awareness of these atrocities remains relatively low.
Doctors Without Borders recently decided not to attend the first annual World Humanitarian Summit, which will be taking place in Istanbul from May 23-24. This decision displayed the organization’s disappointment with the international community’s complacency as well as its lack of faith that the current weaknesses in humanitarian response within distressed areas.
As Dr. Joanne Liu, President of Doctors Without Borders, stated in reference to the current attack on medical neutrality, “We say loud and clear: The doctor of your enemy is not your enemy.” Only when the international community finally reacts to the atrocities in Syria will doctors once again be allowed to do their jobs of saving countless lives and preventing needless bloodshed. The issue goes beyond current political conflicts. It is not territory or power that is currently at risk, it is the value of human life.
