Healthocide

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Healthocide is a neologism in global health and medical ethics that denotes the intentional and systematic destruction of health services, health systems and, more broadly, the health of populations, particularly in the context of armed conflict.

The term was coined by Lebanese physician and historian Joelle M. Abi-Rached and colleagues at the American University of Beirut in a 2025 commentary in BMJ Global Health. It is intended to highlight what the authors describe as the “deliberate killing and/or destruction of health services and systems for ideological purposes” and to frame such practices as a severe violation of international humanitarian law and medical ethics.

Etymology and definition

Healthocide combines health with the suffix -cide (“killing” or “act of destruction”), echoing terms such as genocide and ecocide. Abi-Rached and co-authors link “health” to ideas of wholeness at the level of individuals and populations, and use healthocide to denote the intentional dismantling of this wholeness through large-scale attacks on healthcare infrastructure, personnel and access to care.

A BMJ Group press release summarised the concept as the “deliberate destruction of health services and systems as an act of war” and argued that medical practitioners should “call out and stand firm against this weaponisation of healthcare”.

Background

The term arises within a broader discourse on attacks on hospitals and health facilities in war, which are prohibited under international humanitarian law but have increased in frequency in recent conflicts.

Advocacy groups and monitoring initiatives have documented thousands of such incidents worldwide, including bombings of hospitals, obstruction or targeting of ambulances and killings of health workers, notably in the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, Ukraine, Sudan and Syria.

Scholarly and advocacy work on attacks on healthcare predates the term, including documentation of violations of medical neutrality in conflicts such as Syria and broader debates over the erosion of protections for medical facilities in war.

Coinage and argument

In BMJ Global Health, Abi-Rached and colleagues argue that contemporary warfare shows a shift from incidental “collateral” damage to healthcare towards a pattern in which health systems and workers are used as instruments of war. They describe health workers killed, hospitals and ambulances repeatedly attacked, and access to care obstructed, and contend that this pattern requires a new label.

The authors connect healthocide to the erosion of medical neutrality, understood as the legal and ethical protection afforded to medical personnel and facilities in conflict. They write that the “normalisation” of such attacks risks making humanitarian law “effectively irrelevant” and call on physicians and professional bodies to document abuses, denounce violations and advocate for enforcement of international legal norms, arguing that “silence implies complicity and approval”.

Usage and reception

After its introduction, the term has been adopted in medical and media commentary. A Lancet correspondence referred to “Gaza’s healthocide” and criticised professional societies for muted responses to attacks on healthcare.

An editorial in The BMJ discussed “where genocide, healthocide, and atrocities start” and argued that medical neutrality “ends” when systematic targeting of health services begins.

A rapid response to this editorial proposed the contrasting term “healthogenesis” for efforts to rebuild and sustain health systems in the aftermath of conflict, casting it as a positive counterpart to healthocide.

In an article for NPR’s global health blog, journalist Ari Daniel introduced the term by noting that in the BMJ Global Health commentary it is "defined in part as the deliberate damaging or destruction of health services".

Discussion of the term has included some skepticism. An NPR-linked summary on The Public's Radio noted that "the reaction is mixed". Exam-preparation material from Legacy IAS Academy likewise reports that some scholars question whether it adds much beyond existing protections for healthcare in conflict, while others argue that it usefully highlights the systemic, population-level nature of contemporary attacks on health systems.

Legal and policy commentators have used the term mainly as a descriptive and normative concept. The Indian civil service training site Legacy IAS Academy, for example, presented healthocide as a candidate category for future international criminal law and discussed it alongside genocide and ecocide, while noting that, as of 2025, it is not recognised as a specific crime under existing treaties. In current practice, conduct described as healthocide is generally pursued under existing categories such as war crimes and crimes against humanity.

See also

Genocide Ecocide Medical neutrality Destruction of the healthcare system International humanitarian law

References

This article "Healthocide" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Healthocide. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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