Attacks on Health Care in Syria — Normalizing Violations of Medical Neutrality?

Many hospitals and clinics have been decimated in the Syrian conflict, and hundreds of medical personnel have been killed, 95% of them by government forces. Yet the international community has failed to enforce the Geneva Conventions. In July 2015, a 26-year-old pediatrician described to our team of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigators his experiences in Aleppo, Syria's most populous city. When he was a medical student in 2012, government forces detained and severely beat him. He now works as an emergency medicine physician and surgery resident in a hospital that has twice been bombed by the Syrian government. He lives in fear of being killed by bombs on his way to work or while there. His family wants him to leave Syria as they did, but he explained, “It's our country, and if we leave, . . .