Health and care providers are aimed at conflicts around the world, says UN agency

Attacks on health facilities doubled between 2023 and 2024, and last year more than 900 health workers were killed, the agency reported.

Humanitarian care providers were also killed in record numbers in 2024. Nevertheless, 2025 even surpasses these dark statistics at a time when financing for humanitarian work is shrinking and support services that have been established for decades struggle for operating.

Attack on the Gaza health system

The almost two -year war has destroyed the Gaza health system, leaving thousands without access to essential services. Now, while the famine is, his miscarriages, premature births and cases with a low birth weight increased, while the death of newborns increases, the UN agency warned.

Trek quote: Life must continue even when bombs go off.

“Because the delivery room was under direct fire, I delivered babies in hospital corridors,” said Ayda, a senior midwife in the north of Gaza. “We used mobile phones for lights. Despite the lack of stocks and water, our hands continued to work. Life must continue, even when bombs go off.”

Since October 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) has documented more than 720 attacks on health care in Gaza, killed at least 1,580 health workers and arrested unknown numbers and held by Israel. Among them was Ayda, who was killed a few days after sharing her story in an air raid together with 37 members of her family.

Supply in the midst of destruction in Sudan

In a field of rubble that used to be part of the Ibrahim Malik Hospital in Khartoem, Dr. Khalid Badreldin, a reproductive health analyst at Underpa In Sudan it remembered to perform his first operation and deliver his first baby there.

“Now I think so,” he said, now complaining the closed hospital that once was an important supplier of emergency treatment and mother and neonatal services. The hospital has joined Sudan’s conflict zones that are no longer operational in more than 80 percent of the health facilities.

Meanwhile, midwives in Khartoem, the capital, “take huge risks to reach women in their homes”, explained Hawaa Ismael, who works in the UNFPA-supported Kararai Health Center.

“It was tiring, day and night work, but it is our duty and I am proud of what we have done.”

On the other side of the country, the staff of the El Fasher Maternity Hospital were attacked, with one midwife killed when her house was shot at Thursday and another kidnapped.

Haiti’s spiral crisis

Clinics and hospitals are deliberately focused in the crisis that has seized Haiti in the last 18 months, so that a health system is weakened after years of conflicts, looting and financial collapse.

The State University Hospital, the largest in the country, was attacked during his reopening ceremony in December 2024, after a closure of 10 months, killed with different people, according to reports. In the same month, armed gangs stuck the Bernard Mevs Hospital in Port-au-Prince, the capital, and in April forced attacks to close the Mirebalais University Hospital.

Organized gangs are conducting a brutal campaign to grab control of the capital, with unbridled sexual violence. An estimated 1.2 million women and girls urgently need protection against gender-based violence, but due to constant uncertainty, three of the four safe spaces of UNFPA in Port-au-Prince were recently forced to close and move. Since access to emergency services remains extremely limited, only a quarter of the survivors of rape in the critical period of 72 hours become.

Heavy toll in Ukraine

Since January 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) has included more than 300 attacks by Russia on healthcare institutions, services and staff in Ukraine, where women and girls are often forced to find safer places to protect and give birth.

“Every day brings stress,” said Anastasiia from Sloviansk, in the front line Donetsk region. “Even if there is no immediate strike, the fight in the neighborhood is loud and constant. I was afraid to give birth, but life goes on. We also want to live.”

Her region lacks a neonatal intensive care department and although doctors can perform a Caesarian section, they could not provide complete care if complications arise. As her expiry date approached, Anastasiia traveled about 20 km to reach the regional perinatal center of Kharkiv, even though the city was regularly subjected to bomb attacks, drone attacks and artillery protections.

The response workers who help women such as Anastasiia are often confronted with risks.

“When we arrive at the sites of attacks or in cases of violence, we don’t have time to delay,” explains Roman, who works with an UNFPA mobile psychosocial support team in DNIPRO. “It is as if our own reactions are on hold. Only later, when we look back and discuss it, do we realize how difficult it actually was.”

Under fire in Dr. Congo

In the Restive Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the most facilities that offer maternal health care are bombed or looted.

Indeed, only one third of the hospitals in the region and one in five health centers can function. The UNFPA mobile health teams are often the only option that women have.

Francine Toyata has displaced since February 2023 and remembered her recent journey through “Darkness and Chaos” with her mother to reach an UNFPA-based mobile health clinic to give birth on the Rutshuru-territory of the province of North Kivu.

“It is for women like Francine that we do this work,” said Nelly, her midwife.

While the conflict escalates, his bombs began to touch camps for internal displaced persons, and mobile health clinics and listening centers have also been looted and destroyed.

“We were not safe,” Nelly added. “We need more support to meet these urgent needs.”