Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian hospitals, medical personnel, and health infrastructure have been attacked at least 1,014 times.
This is stated in a report of a coalition of Ukrainian and international institutes, as The Kyiv Independent reported. On average, Ukraine’s health care system has been attacked twice a day since Feb. 24, 2022. By July 14, 2023, 148 medical workers had been killed and 106 wounded, the report said. Researchers also recorded 414 attacks in which hospitals were damaged or destroyed, 79 attacks on ambulances, 57 attacks on children’s hospitals and 40 attacks on maternity wards. The report further states that Russia attacks medical targets both deliberately and indiscriminately, which has long-lasting effects on civilians and prevents their access to health care.
Targeted attacks on healthcare infrastructure?
“The missile was aimed at destroying our surgery. There were no soldiers there,” a hospital employee told researchers. “All the infrastructure in the city is destroyed, there are no schools, no kindergartens. We had a hospital, and that also had to be destroyed (by Russian forces). The maternity hospital was the first to suffer,” the report describes from a hospital in a frontline town in Donetsk region.
Image: Number 10, Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses Parliament (52676732611), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (image resized).