Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-kv2lp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-05T02:19:14.936Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Attacks on Health Care, Personnel, and Patients: From Bad to Worse? An Analysis of the WHO’s Surveillance System (SSA)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2026

Alfons Hollederer*
Affiliation:
The Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Kassel , Kassel, Germany
*
Corresponding author: Alfons Hollederer; Email: alfons.hollederer@uni-kassel.de
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objective

Attacks on health care are war crimes. This study aims to investigate the types, scales, and patterns.

Methods

The secondary analysis explores public data from WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)” from January 2018 to December 2024.

Results

The analysis shows that the attacks on health care and number of affected countries increased strongly. A total of 8,012 attacks on health care were recorded across 22 countries. Just over half of the attacks impacted health care personnel, and almost a quarter affected patients. Attacks can vary widely in type, complexity, and impact, which have regional specificities. The occupied Palestinian territory and Ukraine have suffered the most attacks on health care worldwide. Country-specific attack strategies are identified. Furthermore, the combination of violence with individual and heavy weapons in an attack accumulated the probability of injuries or deaths. Improvements were observed in a few countries. A 2-step cluster analysis reveals that the heterogeneous attacks can be well clustered into approximately 2 halves. It identifies patterns across countries. The most important predictor for clustering of the attacks on health care is violence with heavy weapons, which is frequently observed, for example, in Ukraine.

Conclusion

The global trend has worsened dramatically. Prevention and protection are needed.

Information

Type
Original Research
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc
Figure 0

Table 1. Items of WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”

Figure 1

Figure 1. Attacks on health care worldwide and impact from year 2018 to 2024.Data source: WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”48; own calculation.

Figure 2

Figure 2. Attacks on health care by country.Data source: WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”48; own calculation.

Figure 3

Table 2. Attack types on health care by country in the period from 2018 to 2024

Figure 4

Figure 3. Other attacks on health care from the year 2018 to 2024.Data source: WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”48; own calculation.

Figure 5

Figure 4. Attacks on health workers or patients from the year 2018 to 2024.Data source: WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”48; own calculation.

Figure 6

Figure 5. Relationship map for 2-step cluster analysis (majority cluster assignment 1 or 2).Data source: WHO’s “Surveillance System for Attacks on Health Care (SSA)”48; own calculation.