Sign the letter here

The World Organisation of Family Doctors (“WONCA”) is holding its world conference in Lisbon from 17-21 September 2025, titled a “New Vision for Primary Health Care and Sustainable Development“.

As family doctors we fully support this vision, but where are the people, the families and the family doctors of Gaza and Palestine, in WONCA’s vision for the future?  Healthcare services in Gaza, including primary care services and ambulances, have been almost completely destroyed by the Israeli military, who are also attacking hospitals and healthcare workers in the West Bank.  The Israeli military has also killed over 1,500 Palestinian healthcare workers, including family doctors like Dr Yusra Al-Maqadmeh, who was executed with her son Dr Ahmad Al-Maqadmeh.  In May this year Dr Alaa Al-Najjar’s nine children and her husband Dr Hamdi Al-Najjar were burned to death in an Israeli air strike on their home near Khan Younis. (Just one child survived.) Their bodies were brought to the hospital where Dr Al-Najjar was working.  Hundreds of healthcare workers have been detained, including family doctors like Dr Bilal Al-Masri (for 267 days); Dr Mo’nis Muheisin (484 days) and Dr Ameer Al-Tayyan (481 days) and many tortured, while several have died in Israeli jails, like Dr Adnan Al-Bursh.

According to Dr Muneer Alboursh, Director General Gaza Ministry of Health, Israel’s massacres have resulted in 2,483 families being erased entirely from the civil register and 5,620 families have only one remaining survivor.  In addition, Gaza is entering a phase 5 famine, according to the IPC classification.  The starvation is intentional and is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions.  Enough food for the entire population is waiting on trucks just outside the Gaza strip, but is barred from entry by the Israeli military.

Medical education and training of family doctors has also ceased in Gaza – every university and the only medical school in Gaza have now been destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces.

Israel is committing genocide in Gaza

The September 2024 United Nations report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stated in its conclusions (para 89):

“The Commission finds that Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza. Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of wilful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination. Israeli authorities carried out such acts while tightening the siege of the Gaza Strip, resulting in fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment.”

Physicians for Human Rights Israel has recently stated that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, joining dozens of legal bodies, scholars and humanitarian organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Medicins Sans Frontieres who have also declared there is a genocide in Gaza.  The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, recently stated in a report: “What is happening to Palestinian women and girls is not collateral damage of war, it is the intentional destruction of their lives and bodies, for being Palestinian and for being women.”  She declared this a “femi-genocide”.

WONCA’S new vision spells out our duties as doctors

WONCA’S welcome message for the Lisbon conference rightly talks about “Hippocratic principles; more than ever we should stand together; families, communities and social determinants of health; Population wellbeing is the most important metric of our everyday work!”  What is happening in Gaza is a global threat to these essential principles, yet there is no discussion and no action planned about Gaza at the conference.  Surely we and WONCA must speak out about what is happening in Gaza and Palestine.  Silence today is complicity in genocide. Those who do not take direct, active steps to help end the siege and genocide are complicit in these crimes, and risk normalising them for all of us.

The role of the Israeli Association of Family Physicians (IAFP)

The medical profession in Israel, including the IAFP have simply abandoned all moral and ethical principles of health care when it comes to the Palestinian people. They have stood by silently, while countless war crimes have been committed against civilians, including patients and doctors, nurses and paramedics.  These people are their colleagues, who have given their lives to caring for their patients and communities, yet Israeli Family Physicians have said nothing.

Torture of Palestinian prisoners is widespread in Israeli jails.  Members of the Israeli medical profession have participated in this torture, while others have publicly incited war crimes, such as the 81 Israeli doctors who signed a public letter calling for the bombing of hospitals in Gaza.  Sixteen of those 81 doctors are family physicians; none have been investigated or suspended and the IAFP has said nothing about them.  Many Israeli doctors live and work in the occupied Palestinian territories i.e. on stolen land – they are participating in and benefitting from the dispossession of Palestinians from their land and homes.  The IAFP has also failed to say anything about the system of medical apartheid in the occupied territories, which have led to severe inequities in healthcare provision and health status between Palestinians and Israelis over many years.