Myanmar Regime Behind Over 70% of Attacks on Healthcare Since Coup

Myanmar regime security forces and affiliated militia groups were responsible for over 70 percent of the nearly 2,000 incidents—including attacks, raids, arrests and other security operations—targeting healthcare facilities across Myanmar between the 2021 coup and late April, according to The Irrawaddy’s analysis of raw data compiled by Insecurity Insight.

The Irrawaddy’s findings draw on statistics published on Tuesday in the report “Attacks on Health Care in Myanmar” by the Switzerland-based humanitarian research and data analysis organization.

The disruptions to healthcare were mainly the result of aerial bombing and shelling, which damaged health facilities and killed health workers, as well as raids and arrests.

Insecurity Insight said at least 173 health workers were killed and 930 arrested in the period, with over 500 instances of damage to health facilities being reported.

The Irrawaddy’s analysis of the raw data shows that the remaining 30 percent of attacks and other disruptions were committed by a mixture of groups including ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), People’s Defense Force units, criminals and unidentified armed actors.

Myanmar health workers took to the streets two days after the military takeover in February 2021, declaring their refusal to work under the military regime, in what later came to be known as the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM).

The CDM Medical Network reported that about 6,000 health workers joined the movement during the early period after the coup, disrupting the junta’s health system.

Consequently, the Myanmar regime has conducted a brutal crackdown on striking medical personnel, arbitrarily detaining many on bogus charges, and raiding and closing health clinics, driving many of them to join the armed resistance as health workers.

CDM medical workers have been working in health centers and clinics in resistance-controlled territories, ensuring local communities retain access to health services.

According to a 2025 report by the parallel National Unity Government’s Health Ministry, 106 hospitals, 808 clinics and 192 mobile clinics, operated by 5,038 health workers, were set up over the preceding four years in 190 townships. Many more operate independently.

The regime has responded with violence, mainly through airstrikes against hospitals and clinics in resistance-controlled areas.

The NUG said the regime’s attacks interrupted health care delivery and posed a threat to the lives of health workers.

“The biggest threat is airstrikes. Right now, they are coming almost every day,” a CDM doctor working in the resistance-held town of Mindat, Chin State, told The Irrawaddy. “I have survived two [regime] airstrikes on my hospitals in the past.”

He added, “They [regime forces] don’t want us to cure people. That’s why they target us.”

The regime has deliberately targeted hospitals in areas controlled by EAOs.

On Human Rights Day last December, the regime bombed Mrauk-U Hospital in an Arakan Army-controlled part of Rakhine State, killing 33 people and injuring 76. The victims included children, elderly people and patients.

The group ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights condemned the attack as a war crime, and accused the junta of waging a systematic campaign of violence against civilians.

“The regime deliberately attacks civilian targets, including health facilities, as a strategy to inflict fear by causing more deaths,” Captain Zin Yaw, a military officer who joined the CDM, told The Irrawaddy.

He added that the regime sees health facilities as an important pillar of the resistance movement and believes resistance fighters must be present there, as junta forces themselves are often stationed at health-care sites.

Human rights groups, in a joint statement issued after the recent 48th ASEAN Summit, said the Myanmar regime continues to conduct indiscriminate violence against the civilian population and infrastructure, and called on ASEAN members to cooperate in bringing to justice those responsible for crimes against humanity.