Nearly 70% of health facilities in Ethiopia’s conflict-hit northern region of Tigray have been vandalised and equipment looted, a report by medical charity MSF has found.
The facilities were “deliberately” attacked to make them “non-functional”, Médecins Sans Frontières said.
Violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region has extended to attacks on health facilities, with barely one in 10 functioning. Of the 106 health facilities MSF teams visited, one in five had been or was occupied by armed soldiers; one facility is being used as an army base.
The damaged, looted facilities and resulting lack of medical staff means people in the region have very little access to healthcare. MSF urges all armed groups in the area to respect medical facilities and for services to be restored as soon as possible.
A statement issued Monday by Doctors Without Borders, know by its French initials MSF, said “treatment structures in the Ethiopian region of Tigray were looted, vandalised and destroyed in a deliberate and generalised manner” according to its observers in the area.
The group said it had visited 106 sites between mid-December and early March, and that 70 percent had been looted.
Only 13 percent “functioned normally”, the French-language statement added.
“One health establishment in five visited by MSF teams were occupied by soldiers. In certain cases, this occupation was temporary, while in others, it continued during the visit,” the group said.
