We are doctors who qualified in Ireland in 1984. Over the past 40 years we have worked in varied disciplines and in different countries and are now compelled to speak out. We write to you with humanitarian and ethical concerns for the ongoing suffering of people in Gaza, the denial of life-saving resources, including food, and the deliberate targeting of hospitals and health workers.
Like all doctors, we are bound by the ethical principles enshrined in the Geneva Convention endorsed by the World Medical Association (WMA).
We are aware of Recommendation 4 of the WMA Resolution on the Protection of Healthcare in Israel and Gaza (2024): “All parties to abide by international humanitarian law and the principle of medical neutrality to safeguard the rights and protection of healthcare facilities, healthcare personnel and patients from further threat, interference and attack.”
Your organisation, the WMA, rightly issued a clear statement of condemnation of the recent attack on the Soroka Medical Centre in Israel by Iran, and we note the expression of solidarity with Israeli colleagues offered by your President Dr Ashok Philips to the Israeli Medical Association (ISA).
Therefore, we are concerned at the surprising contrast in your response to the Soroka Centre attack and the response to the ongoing deadly attacks on almost all hospitals in Gaza.
We fail to understand why the response to these equally unacceptable actions should be so different.
Across the world the actions of the Israeli government are being condemned as war crimes (ICJ Ruling). The mistreatment of civilians being carried out in Gaza is well documented by international aid agencies, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The head of the ICRC Mirjana Spoljaric, following a visit to Gaza in April 2025, said that “it is worse than hell on earth” and that “humanity is failing”.
In a joint statement on 7 April 2025, UN bodies, including the World Health Organisation, declared “we are witnessing acts of war in Gaza that have shown an utter disregard for human life”.
“No one is safe. At least 408 humanitarian workers, including 280 from UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] have been killed since October 2023.”
A February 2025 paper in BMJ Global Health, titled ‘Safeguarding healthcare workers in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine’, stated in its summary: “There has been a recent increase in attacks on humanitarian workers in places affected by armed conflict. Israel’s egregious violations of international law in Gaza and the West Bank are among the leading drivers of this disturbing trend.”
The short- and long-term impacts on the lives and health of the civilian population will be catastrophic. The loss of over 50,000 lives including many children, the physical damage inflicted by starvation and injuries (comprising the highest number of child amputees in the world), and the psychological effects of fear, stress and grief is incalculable. Israel’s deliberate destruction of almost all the healthcare infrastructure and services is compounding this suffering and loss.
As doctors we have a responsibility not just to the individual but also to wider public health systems. Consequently, we must highlight injustice and harm where we encounter it and adhere to the universal counsel of ‘Primum non nocere’.
It is in that context that we ask you to specifically and unequivocally condemn the current unwarranted and disproportionate Israeli aggression in Gaza, with its devastating effects on healthcare and human life.
Likewise, in the spirit of professional fraternity, we ask you to appeal to colleagues in the IMA to join us in:
(a) Calling for an immediate ceasefire and the full resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
(b) Insisting on the protection of health and humanitarian workers as they do their work, and also the release of the detained Gazan healthcare workers and the Israeli hostages.
Finally, in a demonstration of even-handed professionalism, we ask the WMA to extend the same courtesy shown to the IMA and offer a promise of solidarity to our very vulnerable colleagues in Gaza.
Congrats to Galway university graduates and trinity graduates . I am quite sure as member of the UCD medical graduates reunion committee of 1982
we entirely echo the empathy expressed to our medical / nursing / Emergency ambulance first responders in Gaza and the occupied territories . Dr. Fiona Donnelly MFOM , MRCGP .