HEALTHCARE PROTECTION PROJECT

The Healthcare Protection Project by Action For Sama, spearheaded by Dr Hamza al-Kateab, is a long-term initiative to expose and respond to the targeted attacks on hospitals in Syria and other conflict zones. The project aims to influence governments, policymakers, and the public through education, advocacy, and expert-led dialogue.

In its first phase, Action For Sama has hosted ‘Healthcare in Conflict’ events in the UK, US, and Germany, where Dr Hamza shared his firsthand experience of running the last hospital in Aleppo, alongside discussions with other frontline medical voices. The initiative also includes the dissemination of campaign materials and access to the award-winning film For Sama.

Looking ahead, the project continues to gather momentum. Action For Sama has conducted global medical online workshops and collected oral histories from Syrian healthcare workers, which will inform upcoming reports and be shared through high-level forums and public platforms. These activities will feed into future plans including a manual of recommendations for donors and NGOs, and expanded global advocacy. The project is ongoing, with further updates, guidance, and public campaigns to follow.

NEW RESEARCH REPORT

How can protection measures for healthcare workers in conflict zones be improved: Syria case study

Hospitals turned to rubble, medics kidnapped, ambulances bombed. Choosing to save lives should never cost your own and yet, in Syria, being a healthcare worker has meant being a target.

Even after the fall of the Assad regime, they remain in danger from trauma, burnout, violence and poverty, in systems broken by decades of brutality and corruption.

Our report offers a frontline account of what it means to protect lives under fire. Based on 20 in-depth interviews with Syrian healthcare workers across regions, genders, and roles, it traces the evolution of risks - from siege, starvation and airstrikes, to insecurity and neglect. It’s an account of the deep emotional and physical toll taken on by medics who serve amidst war, and their brave responses to the increased and deliberate target of medical facilities: they built underground hospitals and camouflaged ambulances, risking everything to keep others alive. However, local bravery and ingenuity cannot be enough: medics remain exhausted, traumatised and underfunded.

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At its heart, this report delivers a set of clear, practical recommendations grounded in the levied realities of Syrian healthcare workers, which include calls for hospital fortification funding, early warning systems, secure salaries and more. All of this requires coordinated action from donors, UN agencies, government and civil society, to ensure that medics are no longer forced to choose between saving people’s lives and protecting their own.

True global backing was needed then, and it is still needed now as the targeting of hospitals has already echoed beyond Syria - in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan - where healthcare workers are once again abandoned under fire, while international mechanisms fail again and again to prepare or respond to these crimes. Without a serious reform to how medics are protected and funded in conflict zones, Syria will remain a warning - not a lesson learnt.

Dr Munzer Alkhalil is a research fellow at the LSE IDEAS, a NextGen Humanitarian Scholar at CHH-Lancet Commission, a senior research fellow at David Nott Foundation, and the chair of Syria Public Health Network.

Alkhalil is a medical doctor by background and an orthopedist by training, with an MSc in Health Policy, Planning, and Financing. He is a PhD candidate at Warwick University. Alkhalil co-founded several quasi-hybrid health governmental institutions and hospitals in northwest Syria, including the Idlib Health Directorate and Alamal Hospital for Orthopaedic Surgery. He led the IHD from 2013 to 2020.

Dr Munzer’s research assistant on this project was Mahmoud Abdullah.