For Immediate Release
Contact: info@uaem.org
December 22, 2023 - Washington, DC- As students and recent graduates of universities all over North America, we feel compelled to respond to the violence taking place in Gaza on October 7, 2023 and since. We are alarmed about the silencing of student and faculty voices who aim to speak up against oppression, and violence in the Gaza Strip. As an organization, we believe that students are active change-makers for health equity and justice and are socially conscious citizens.
We believe that universities should be places where students are empowered to use their voices to advocate for social justice. We are therefore disappointed to see our universities suppressing the speech of nonviolent student activists. It is also troubling to see universities fail to protect their students from third parties, such as members of Congress, who seek to silence free speech on college campuses. UAEM North America also unequivocally condemns actions of intimidation, bullying, threats or violence because of anyone's ethnicity or faith, as well as any statements of antisemitism, anti-Arab racism, and Islamophobia.
As future and current health care, public health, and legal leaders, we are shocked and appalled at the failure of world powers to act in the interests of access to health care and humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. To be frank, we expect better of our governments and elected leaders.
The WHO has reported at least 137 attacks on health care institutions and providers in Gaza, resulting in 521 deaths and 686 injuries, including 16 deaths and 38 injuries of health workers on duty. Journalists and aid organizations have reported severe shortages of painkillers and anesthesia, while aid trucks bearing medicines have faced difficulties entering the strip. We stand in firm solidarity with the patients, health care workers, and families of those who have endured the blockade on the Gaza Strip and attacks on civilians in the region.
Due to overcrowding in and damage to hospitals, as well as damage to water and sewage systems in bombings, the war also threatens to worsen Gaza’s already-alarming rates of antimicrobial resistance. This threat is all the more powerful because our profit-driven R&D system does not incentivize the development of new antibiotics.
Guided by our shared humanity, we support an immediate and permanent end to the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip, emphasizing the critical need for the unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid and equitable access to healthcare for all in the region.
