Doctors Against Genocide Hold Global Sick-Out to Highlight Atrocities in Gaza

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Human Rights and Global Wrongs

Doctors and health care providers across the globe are engaging in a day of action, calling in sick and taking part in other demonstrations against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The “Sick From Genocide” global vigil, organized by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) and several other organizations demonstrating against Israel’s thus-far 15-month genocidal war on Gaza, features pop-up clinics in cities across the world, including in the U.S. Health care workers participating in the event are urging others in their profession to take a day of mental health leave “to reflect on the immense moral injury of funding a genocide and engage the most important aspect of treatment: publicly demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza.”

“After witnessing 15 months of relentless violence and destruction in Gaza, we can no longer carry on as if everything is normal,” the account for DAG wrote in a post on X. “The international system has failed, and we are sick — sick from genocide, sick from complicity, and sick from silence.”

“To all healthcare workers, professionals, and allies — stand with us. Pause. Grieve. Demand change,” the post added.

In a press release, DAG stated:

As healthcare workers, we have witnessed unimaginable atrocities: hospitals destroyed, patients and colleagues targeted, and entire communities left in ruins.

…

This is not just a day off — it is a call to action. Together, we will demand accountability, justice, and an end to the ongoing genocide. Organizing to end genocide is not only our responsibility — it is our path to healing.

The effects of Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza, including its attacks on health care facilities, have been horrific. Just last week, the Israeli military forced the evacuation of the last two functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, leaving around 75,000 people trapped in that area without access to health care of any kind.

The official death toll from Israel’s genocide, which began in October 2023, sits at over 45,000 people. However, other estimates suggest that the true death toll could be much higher, with thousands of Palestinians missing and presumed dead under the rubble. Another 100,000 have fled the region, and an estimated 107,000 have been injured by Israeli attacks, according to Gaza officials, dropping Gaza’s population totals by a devastating 6 percent.

Rupa Marya — a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who is currently on paid suspension after condemning the U.S.’s financial backing of Israel’s genocide — provided a statement to Truthout regarding Monday’s call to action.

“Since October 2023 we have watched in horror as Israel has targeted our Palestinian colleagues and destroyed hospitals under false pretense,” Marya, who is the author of “Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice,” said in her statement. “The Israeli military has rounded up physicians and other healthcare workers and tortured them, some to death such as Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, professor of orthopedic surgery.”

“Currently the Israeli military has abducted our colleague, pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya and sent him to the same torture facility where Dr. Al-Bursh was killed,” Marya pointed out. “We are calling for his immediate release and the release of the hundreds of healthcare workers who the Israeli military has detained.”

According to witness reports, Safiya, 51, was abducted by Israeli soldiers from the hospital he managed in northern Gaza, beaten with batons, and forced to strip and wear prisoner garb before being taken away.

Marya went on to reference other first-hand accounts of physicians who have been to Gaza, stating:

Physicians report that Israeli soldiers throw drones into the hospitals to kill patients in their beds and staff in the act of care. Israeli soldiers enter the hospitals to attack the machinery — lab machines, hemodialysis units, CT scanners. These actions together with bombing the hospitals and setting them on fire render them completely useless for patient care.

“As human beings we are wired for empathy. … To ignore this is to ignore our very humanity,” Marya concluded. “We cannot and will not sever our care for one another. And as we care, we are sickened by this violence.”

Other DAG members and supporters also spoke about their reasons for taking part in the sick-out on Monday.

“We are answering the call from Gaza and Doctors Against Genocide. Release all the abducted Palestinian healthcare workers taken hostage by Israel. End the attacks on hospitals. End the genocide. End the occupation. Free the people of Palestine,” wrote Ottawa-based primary care doctor Yipeng Ge in a post on Bluesky.

In a separate post, Ge added:

The only cure is an end to genocide, justice for the victims, and accountability for those responsible, and spending tax dollars on housing, healthcare and education, NOT genocide and occupation.

The Schiller Institute, a think tank based in Germany that aims to “defend the rights of all humanity to progress” also published its support of the DAG “Sick From Genocide” global vigil.

“With urgency, the Schiller Institute adds its voice to those of dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals worldwide in support of the demand by Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) that the ongoing genocide being perpetrated in Gaza must stop immediately,” the institute wrote.

Hannah Janeway, an emergency physician in Los Angeles, spoke to Truthout about the DAG action on Monday.

“The truth is that health is not apolitical. It’s affected by policies that reflect the distribution of power and denial/inequality of health services and infrastructure has been used to oppress people historically and in the present,” Janeway said. “As healers, doctors have a moral and ethical imperative to provide healthcare to all, even when it goes against the dominant political will and even when it gets us in trouble with those systems of oppression that uphold it.”

They added:

We aren’t just fighting for our colleagues who have been maimed and killed en masse in Gaza. We are working in solidarity with them and with the people of Gaza to assure basic rights to health and wellbeing, which have been systematically denied through the genocide occurring there.

“Equity will never be achieved until we are willing to risk our privilege in service of our mission to heal,” Janeway said.