by InTrieste
More than 15,000 doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical professionals across Italy are expected to take part Thursday in a nationwide day of fasting to protest the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, organizers said.
The initiative, called Digiuno per Gaza (“Fasting for Gaza”), will involve health workers in about 500 hospitals and medical facilities. Organizers said the demonstration was a response to what they described as “systematic attacks on civilians, famine, bombings of hospitals and schools,” and the deaths of more than 1,400 healthcare workers in Gaza, a figure cited from the World Health Organization.
The protest follows an Israeli strike this week on the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza that killed at least 20 people, including five journalists, according to health officials there. Organizers of Thursday’s fast called the situation “an unprecedented humanitarian emergency” that requires “a concrete response from healthcare institutions.”
Participants are demanding that the Italian government suspend military agreements with Israel, halt arms sales, and push for a cease-fire and humanitarian corridors. They are also calling on universities, professional associations and medical institutions to “publicly recognize the genocide in Gaza.”
The campaign includes an appeal for a boycott of drugs manufactured by Teva, an Israeli pharmaceutical company. “The attack on healthcare workers strikes us both out of instinctive solidarity with our colleagues and because we realize it is part of a deliberate strategy to deny civilians access to healthcare,” said Dr. Viviana Fusco, director of the mental health department of the Naples 2 Local Health Authority, in an interview with the Italian outlet Fanpage. “We have a duty as professionals to raise our voices.”
The initiative grew out of a smaller protest in Tuscany last month, when about 4,000 medical professionals fasted in solidarity with Gaza. Since then, it has gathered momentum, attracting support from more than 100 civic associations nationwide.
