Attacks on healthcare worldwide by country or territory 2015-2023

From 2015 to 2023, the Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA) registered 4,735 attacks against healthcare globally. As of May 2023, most of these attacks took place in the occupied Palestinian territories (i.e., the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem), followed by Ukraine. Since January 2015, the occupied Palestinian territories registered 1,281 healthcare attacks, while Ukraine registered 977.

The targeting of healthcare structures has become part of the strategy and tactics of modern warfare. According to the number of attacks against healthcare by type, individual and heavy weapons were frequently used in such attacks. These attacks against healthcare often target facilities, personnel, patients, transports, or supplies. The yearly number of registered attacks against healthcare reveals that such attacks were especially numerous in 2022.

Number of reported attacks against healthcare worldwide from 2015 to 2023, by country or territory

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Release date

May 2023

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

January 2015 to May 2023

Supplementary notes

The World Health Organization defines attack on healthcare as "any act of verbal or physical violence or obstruction or threat of violence that interferes with the availability, access and delivery of curative and/or preventive health services during emergencies. The nature and types of attacks vary across contexts and can range from violence with heavy weapons to psychological threats or intimidation".

Each reported attack is assigned a level of certainty by a designated WHO staff member which conveys a level of confidence that the reported attack has occurred. The level of certainty applies to whether the attack occurred, but does NOT apply to the detailed data about the attack.

To maintain accuracy of WHO-reported data, the SSA verification method assigns increasing levels of certainty based on the amount of data that is available and the supporting evidence. There are four levels of confidence: “rumour”, “possible”, “probable”, and “confirmed”. Any report assigned the level “rumour” is not published on the SSA dashboard. The criteria for determining the level of certainty of an attack is based on the sources of information available to triangulate the data.

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