At 12 noon on Tuesday, September 23rd, healthcare workers across Ireland will observe a minute of silence to honour healthcare workers in Gaza.
The minute of silence will take place in hospitals, primary care centres, GP practices and pharmacies across Ireland. Healthcare workers will do so to mourn their colleagues who have been killed, to support those who have been abducted and to show solidarity with those who are still working under horrific conditions.
This minute of silence, supported by the HSE, is in direct opposition to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, in particular their targeting of hospitals and other healthcare facilities, making the jobs of healthcare workers extremely dangerous and severely limiting any care they can provide.
According to the World Health Organisation, 94 per cent of hospitals in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, leaving the remaining “partially functioning” ones overwhelmed, with some reaching up to 300 per cent capacity. All the while, famine is evident, with 400,000 people facing critical hunger and over one million people facing emergency levels of starvation.
See the full statement from Irish Healthcare Workers below:
Since the first treaty of the Geneva Conventions was signed in 1864, international humanitarian law has protected access to healthcare in times of armed conflict. The Red Cross and the Red Crescent became the symbols that protect sick and wounded people and those who care for them.
Israel has turned these symbols into targets, in its systematic destruction of the healthcare system of Gaza. Hospitals and clinics have been bombed, ambulances destroyed and buried, double-tap strikes on hospitals have killed people, and killed their rescuers. Drones have flown into children’s wards and exploded, spraying shrapnel everywhere, and followed healthcare workers home to blow them up alongside their family.
Our healthcare worker colleagues in Gaza have stayed with their patients, enduring the most harrowing conditions, trying to save and comfort wounded people, with little or no equipment, and despite their hunger. They put their own lives and those of their families at risk every single day – showing the rest of the world what medical ethics truly are.
Supported by the HSE, healthcare workers in Ireland will observe a minute’s silence at 12 noon on Tuesday Sept 23rd, to honour our colleagues in Gaza: to mourn those who have been killed, to stand in solidarity with those who have been abducted, and those still working
