WMA members must call for release of detained Palestinian medics

International President of MSF.Published On 5 Oct 20265 Oct 2026More than 1,700 healthcare workers have been killed during the genocide in Gaza. Israel has detained hundreds more without charges. Doctors, nurses and paramedics who stayed to treat the wounded have themselves become casualties of this war.When medical staff are killed, imprisoned or disappeared, it is not only they who pay the price. Patients lose the people they rely on to keep them alive.This is something delegates who gather in Rotterdam this week for the General Assembly of the World Medical Association (WMA) must remember. The fate of their Palestinian colleagues should be put on the table, not as a debating point, but as a test of whether the world’s governing body of medical ethics still means what it says.The WMA already recognised the seriousness of these issues last year by adopting a resolution on the protection of healthcare in conflict. That was an important step and a welcome reaffirmation of the principles of medical neutrality. The challenge now is to ensure this is followed by the commitment of every medical association to explicitly support it and to use its influence to pressure governments to act....