Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: peace is the best medicine

Abstract

Conflict and attacks on healthcare must cease, as without peace there can be no health, writes WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus War and disease are old friends. In the Napoleonic wars and the American Civil War, more soldiers died from disease than in battle. It was no coincidence that the 1918 influenza pandemic erupted during the first world war or that the final frontier for eradicating polio is in the most insecure regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Ebola outbreak in the relatively stable Équateur province in 2018 took just two months to control, whereas the outbreak in the insecure provinces of North Kivu and Ituri in 2020 took two years. Israel’s wars with Hamas and Hezbollah have had devastating consequences for the health of the people of both Gaza and Lebanon. At the time of writing, more than 43 000 people have been killed in Gaza, more than 10 000 are missing, and more than 102 000 are injured, at least one quarter of whom will need long term rehabilitation.1 In addition, harms to mental health can endure indefinitely. Almost all of Gaza faces severe food insecurity, and 60 000 children under 5 are estimated to have acute malnutrition.2 Every day, hundreds of women give birth in traumatic, unhygienic, and undignified conditions3; 1.2 million children need mental health and psychosocial support for depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts4; there are increasing reports of acute respiratory infections, acute jaundice, and diarrhoeal diseases; and a case of polio has been reported 25 years since it was last seen in Gaza.5 At the very time when Gaza’s health system needs to be supported, one of the legs on which it stands is being kicked out from underneath …