A word is born — and critiqued: ‘healthocide’

This week, a new word was unveiled: healthocide.

In a commentary published in the journal BMJ Global Health , it’s defined in part as the deliberate damaging or destruction of health services.

“We mean the intentional, systematic destruction of not only health care infrastructure, hospitals, health care workers, medical supply lines,” says co-author Joelle Abi-Rached , a professor of medicine at the American University of Beirut, “but also the devastation of a population’s health and its well-being in its entirety. In other words, healthocide refers to a shattering of the very wholeness that health itself implies.”

By creating this new term, Abi-Rached seeks to convey the urgent need to address what she says are flagrant violations of international law. In addition, she hopes