Reports indicate an unusually high number of deaths (violent and unexplained) among Ethiopian medical doctors of Amhara origin in recent years, occurring amid conflict in the Amhara Region, with limited transparent investigations.

Using Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics, the author explores how Amhara healthcare workers perceive themselves as providing care while living under persistent insecurity, exposure to violence, and conditions that make life precarious (“healing in the shadow of death”).

The essay calls for rigorous, independent investigations and systematic documentation rather than premature conclusions, while stressing that attacks on medical professionals and intellectuals raise serious questions about vulnerability, accountability, and the protection of civilians under international law.

Over the past three years, reports in the public domain have suggested that an unusually high number of Ethiopian medical doctors of Amhara origin have died under tragic and, in some cases, unexplained circumstances. According to these reports, some were killed by unidentified armed actors, while others reportedly died suddenly from illnesses whose causes have not been publicly clarified. In many instances, there has been no transparent or independent investigation, leaving families, colleagues, and the wider public with unanswered questions.

Some commentators have speculated about possible explanations for some of these deaths, including allegations that they may be linked to a particular vaccination. At present, however, I have not found sufficient credible evidence to support these claims. They should therefore be regarded as unverified hypotheses rather than established facts.

Nevertheless, the reported deaths raise important questions. Do they represent isolated incidents, or do they suggest a broader pattern? Are members of the Amhara medical and intellectual community being disproportionately affected by violence or other risks? Has the medical profession become particularly hazardous for Ethiopian doctors of Amhara origin? Most importantly, how do medical doctors themselves understand and interpret these events?

To explore these questions, I conducted interviews with five Ethiopian medical professionals living both in Ethiopia and abroad. This essay combines their reflections with publicly available reports and my own observations. It does not claim to provide definitive answers or establish causal relationships. Rather, it offers an exploratory analysis based on a limited number of interviews, publicly available information, and anecdotal evidence. Its purpose is to encourage careful discussion and to underscore the importance of credible, transparent, and independent investigations into reported attacks on healthcare professionals and other unexplained deaths.

The analysis draws on Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics as its principal analytical framework. Mbembe developed the concept to describe how political power determines who is protected and who is exposed to death, abandonment, or conditions that make life increasingly unliveable. Necropolitics extends Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics, which examines how modern states govern populations through institutions such as public health, education, policing, and other forms of social regulation. While biopolitics focuses on the management and preservation of life, Mbembe argues that sovereign power may also operate through the production of “death worlds”—social and political conditions in which particular populations are systematically exposed to violence, deprivation, insecurity, and premature death.

Central to necropolitics is the argument that not all lives are accorded equal value. Race, ethnicity, colonial legacies, class, citizenship, and other structures of power influence which populations receive protection and which are treated as expendable. A frequently cited illustration is that of two communities facing the same natural disaster. If authorities consistently evacuate and protect one community while neglecting the other, allowing preventable deaths because that population is regarded as less deserving of protection, a necropolitical analysis would ask how political power has rendered one group significantly more vulnerable to death than the other. The issue is therefore not simply that people die, but that political structures may systematically expose particular populations to greater risks of death and insecurity.

This paper uses Mbembe’s framework to examine whether the experiences described by the interviewed medical professionals can be understood through the lens of necropolitics. It does not assume that the framework definitively explains the reported deaths. Rather, it employs necropolitics as a critical analytical tool for exploring how the interviewees interpret insecurity, violence, and vulnerability in their professional and social lives. The central argument advanced here is that, according to these accounts, many Amhara medical professionals perceive themselves as providing care while living and working under persistent conditions of insecurity—in other words, as healing in the shadow of death.

When Healers Become the Victims: Life, Death, and Medical Practice in Ethiopia

There are credible reports that Amhara healthcare workers, including physicians, nurses, and other medical personnel, have been killed during the ongoing conflict in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region. The available evidence confirms that healthcare workers have been among the victims of violence. However, it does not establish........

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