Ukraine: The destruction of healthcare is not a random consequence of war, it is deliberate and calculated
MSF’s report documents damaged hospitals, targeted medical teams and worsening access to care
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today released No Safe Place to Heal, a report documenting relentless attacks on healthcare and medical personnel in Ukraine. The attacks constitute a deliberate strategy to destroy the medical system and collectively punish people rather than being an incidental product of Russia’s invasion.
Between April 2022 and December 2025, MSF documented more than 20 attacks on medical facilities associated with our activities. Four hospitals where MSF worked have been destroyed. Seven ambulance bases had to be abandoned. MSF has lost access to more than 80 villages we supported across six regions with primary healthcare mobile clinics.
The World Health Organization documented 2,811 attacks on healthcare from February 2022 to the end of 2025. Ukraine’s Ministry of Health reports Russian forces have damaged or destroyed more than 2,500 medical facilities in the same period, including 327 that have been destroyed.
“When hospitals are struck repeatedly, when ambulances are targeted with precision drones, when medical workers are killed en-route to delivering medicines in clearly marked vehicles — this is not coincidence. This is a pattern; patterns have intent behind them.”
Robin Meldrum, MSF country coordinator in Ukraine
No Safe Place to Heal
Read the report“These attacks are too consistent, too frequent and too precise to be accidental,” says Robin Meldrum, MSF country coordinator in Ukraine. “When hospitals are struck repeatedly, when ambulances are targeted with precision drones, when medical workers are killed en-route to delivering medicines in clearly marked vehicles — this is not coincidence. This is a pattern; patterns have intent behind them.”
Strikes on medical infrastructure and the crippling fear of attacks on civilians have created a crisis in access to healthcare for people in need of non-emergency medical treatment or treatment for chronic conditions.
An MSF survey of 187 civilians living near frontline regions found the share of people who said they could access healthcare “always” or “most of the time” fell from 72 per cent before the war’s escalation to 35 per cent afterward. People accessing care “rarely” or “never” rose from 7 per cent to 35 per cent. This translates directly into suffering and even death from manageable conditions — cardiovascular disease, diabetes, epilepsy — conditions that have become life-threatening due to interrupted treatment and delayed access. Healthcare facilities that remain operational are desperately understaffed: in one MSF-supported hospital in Kherson, the number of physicians has fallen by 66 per cent since 2022.
MSF teams in eastern and southern Ukraine work under the constant threat of First-Person View (FPV) drone attacks — weapons that allow soldiers to identify and strike targets with precision in real time. On Sept. 29, 2025, a nurse and a director from an MSF-supported health centre, were struck by a Russian FPV drone while delivering medicines in a clearly marked vehicle in Lyman, Donetsk. The director lost a leg in the attack. Under international humanitarian law, deliberately attacking clearly marked medical personnel or vehicles may amount to a war crime.
MSF medical workers near the frontline and in an early rehabilitation treatment centre in Cherkasy, are witnessing how drone warfare is impacting the medical response. Where injuries were once predominantly caused by artillery, drone strikes now account for a growing share of trauma cases, resulting in injured people with simultaneous wounds, higher infection rates and rising rates of sepsis.
An MSF surgeon describes a patient who arrived with an amputated right leg, an open fracture of the left leg, an open fracture of the right arm, shrapnel in the left arm and multiple wounds to the chest, abdomen and head. Five surgeons operated simultaneously for around six hours. The same surgeon noted, “The first battle is against bleeding. If the patient survives that, the second battle is against infection. And many lose that second fight.”
This year marks ten years since the adoption of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2286, which unequivocally reiterates the protection of humanitarian and medical personnel, patients and healthcare infrastructure in armed conflict. MSF calls on all parties to uphold their obligations under international humanitarian law; on states with influence over Russia to use it to demand an end to attacks on healthcare; and on the Security Council to properly investigate and make public denunciations about attacks on healthcare as a way of showing commitment to UNSC Resolution 2286.
