Dutch medical appeal for nuclear disarmament

In September 2015, on the UN International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a medical appeal for nuclear disarmament was presented in Amsterdam. This declaration, signed with remarkable enthusiasm by 100 leading Dutch healthcare executives, clinicians, and scientists, is meant to put the urgent need for nuclear disarmament back on the societal and political agenda—not from an ideological or political viewpoint, but from a medical humanitarian one. It is now circulating within the Dutch medical community, and will be officially presented to Parliament in the coming months.

That day the NVMP, the Dutch affiliate of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, organised a symposium about nuclear weapons for physicians and other medical professionals. It covered the medical humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapon use, and the position and role of Dutch healthcare and its allies.

The full report by Peter Buijs of NVMP and Lodewijk Wigersma of the Royal Dutch Medical Association and the text of the Medical Appeal are on the BMJ Blog.