Violations of medical neutrality during protests in Iran

Hospitals are protected spaces under international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, and are further safeguarded by WHO standards, which prohibit military or security force interference in health-care spaces.¹ Such interference violates the principle of medical neutrality, which requires that patients, health-care providers, ambulances, and hospitals remain free from attacks, intimidation, or violence. Attacks on hospitals represent grave violations of human rights and, in some contexts, constitute war crimes.¹ Hospitals are neutral environments in which patients should not fear violence and where governments should not interfere with medical care. Fear of arrest or violence within hospitals deters people from seeking care and constitutes a direct violation of fundamental human rights.²

Verified reports and multiple publicly available video recordings documented the forced entry of the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran into Khomeini Hospital (Ilam province, Iran) and Sina Hospital (Tehran, Iran) during the January 2026 protests.³ These videos show security forces entering hospital grounds, discharging tear gas and firearms, breaking down doors, assaulting health-care providers, and arresting injured protestors who were seeking refuge and medical care.^3–5 These violent actions obstructed urgent treatment and placed health-care workers at serious risk, reflecting continued state interference in medical services.⁴

These events are not isolated. Similar incidents were reported during the 2022–23 protests following the death of Mahsa Amini.⁶ During that period, health-care facilities were repeatedly attacked by security forces, and physicians and nurses attempting to treat injured protesters were threatened or arrested.⁷ The killing of Aida Rostami on Dec 12, 2022, a physician who provided care to injured protesters, represents a tragic example of the security forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s brutality towards health-care providers.⁸ The WHO has repeatedly emphasised that attacks on health-care personnel, ambulances, and hospitals violate international norms and undermine access to essential care.² During protests, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s security forces have also used ambulances to transport security forces or move injured protestors to detention facilities instead of hospitals, which has further eroded public trust in emergency medical services and endangers patients.^9,10

Since 2024, during the presidency of Masoud Pezeshkian, a former cardiothoracic surgeon, health-care providers in Iran have continued to face repeated attacks with no accountability. The recurrence of these incidents shows a persistent denial of medical care to Iranian people and raises serious concerns about systemic failures to uphold basic international humanitarian standards. As physicians and health-care professionals, we firmly condemn the violence from Iranian security forces, which compromises the safety, neutrality, and independence of health-care spaces. We call for the immediate establishment of an independent and transparent investigation into the Khomeini and Sina hospital incidents, including evaluation of violence against patients and health-care providers, damage to medical infrastructure, and resulting injuries or deaths. Findings must be publicly reported, and concrete safeguards implemented to prevent the recurrence of such incidents. We urge the international medical and public health communities to condemn these acts and uphold the principles of medical neutrality.

A brief explanation of the international conventions for the protection of medical environments:

The fact is that these conventions, resolutions, and treaties have existed since World War II and within the framework of the human rights charters of the organization known as the United Nations. Their philosophy of existence has not been to truly help patients and ensure the independence of medical personnel and respect for the human rights of the inhabitants of the earth, but rather to induce the capitalist system, governments, and its powers to adhere to human rights, and of course, human rights, the twisted prescription of capital. For this very reason, their implementation or non-implementation has usually been subject to public and behind-the-scenes agreement or disagreement between the all-powerful pole of the capitalist world, or at best, a settlement of scores between the blockades and, of course, the level of pressure from the cries and protests of the world’s workers. With all this, as far as the octopus regimes of the Islamic Republic and Israel are concerned, they have never had the slightest need to comply with these deceptive prescriptions of the capitalist system.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)00101-7/fulltext