Displaying items by tag: Health

Health Care in Danger – a global challenge. Every day health workers face one of the most serious and yet unacknowledged humanitarian challenges of our times. Patients and medical workers are attacked, ambulances are obstructed, hospitals are shelled and violent intrusions disrupt the working of clinics, dispensaries and first aid stations. These are daily occurrences which endanger the delivery of effective and impartial health care. There are many challenges and the health care community has a central role in addressing them. A one-day symposium in London on Health Care in Danger, hosted by the International Committee of the Red Cross,…

The Middle East is an atypical context for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The increasing complexity of humanitarian action, particularly the blurring of the lines between humanitarian and military actors and the increasing use of humanitarian language to justify wars, have made it even more difficult for MSF to negotiate independent operational space. This is especially so in some countries in the Middle East. Moreover, we are unaccustomed to working in middle-income countries where addressing non-communicable diseases is the priority. Although MSF is used to responding to acute crises, the Middle East suffers mostly from the chronic consequences of conflict. In…

An estimated 17% of Lebanon’s population suffers from mental health problems, yet almost 90% have no access to treatment. On the surface, Lebanon has made significant strides since the 2006 war, and is today a major financial and cultural centre in the Middle East. Economic growth for 2011 is forecast at 6%, a record 2 million tourists visited the country last year and Lebanon received $8.2 billion in remittances in 2010 from Lebanese nationals living abroad. At the same time, however, the country is gripped by political crises, threatening its financial and social fabric, and poverty levels in some parts…

The special feature of this issue of Humanitarian Exchange focuses on humanitarian action in the Middle East.

The livelihoods of an estimated 12 million people are currently under threat in the Horn of Africa and nearly 4 million people in Somalia alone are in need of life-saving assistance. Although the world produces more than enough food to feed everyone, in 2011 almost 1 billion people will go hungry. This is not only felt in headline-making famines, but also in the alarming levels of malnutrition among the world’s poorest. The causes of hunger and malnutrition, both acute and chronic, are complex, involving global food markets, agricultural production, environmental degradation, poor infrastructure and governance, and poverty. When responding to…

23rd May – 2nd June 2011 In collaboration with the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre, The University College London (UCL) Centre for International Health and Development (CIHD) will be delivering a Nutrition In Emergencies (NIE) Regional Training Course in Chiang Mai, Thailand in May 2011. The intensive 10-day course is targeted towards anyone who has an involvement with emergency nutrition including general programme managers, logisticians, food security staff, livelihood staff, health personnel or nutritionists who would like to learn more about emergency programming. For any further information please email the NIE Training Coordinator at coordinator@nietraining.net For more information on the course…

Le 10 janvier 2010, l’équipe humanitaire globale passa la journée à examiner nos approches actuelles à la réponse humanitaire en zone urbaine.  Nous conclûmes que hhle défi le plus significatif auquel nous aurions à faire face serait un tremblement de terre majeur dans une zone urbaine densément peuplée.  Nous pensâmes que nous avions besoin d’élargir notre capacité et notre compréhension de quel type d’assistance on pourrait avoir besoin en préparation d’un tel événement.  Moins de 48 heures plus tard le tremblement de terre frappait Port-au-Prince, laissant finalement 220.000 morts et 1,5 millions de gens sans foyer.  En quelques heures, l’équipe…

In the wake of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) mobilised the biggest single-country emergency response operation it had ever mounted. Deployments included field hospitals, one of which was a specially designed rapid response mobile and light hospital with 30 expatriate staff. This was initially set up in Port-au-Prince at the main university hospital, and later relocated to Petit Goave in the south-west of Haiti. This article describes the lessons learned during the hospital deployment.   The RDEH ERU The Rapid Deployment Emergency Hospital is a health Emergency Response…

On 10 January 2010 Oxfam GB’s global humanitarian team spent the day reviewing our current approaches to humanitarian response in urban areas. We concluded that the most significant challenge we could possibly face would be a major earthquake in a densely populated urban area. We felt we needed to boost our capacity and understanding of what sort of assistance might be needed in preparation for such an event. Less than 48 hours later the earthquake struck Port-au-Prince, eventually leaving up to 220,000 dead and 1.5 million homeless. Within hours Oxfam’s team in Haiti was responding despite massive personal loss, and…

Nunca antes ha estado tan claro cuáles son las intervenciones que deben llevarse a cabo para mitigar las consecuencias perjudiciales para la salud que provocan las guerras y los desastres naturales, y qué estándares deben esforzarse por alcanzar estas intervenciones; de manera similar, nunca ha sido mayor la gama de intervenciones a nuestra disposición. A pesar de estos avances, estudios recientes del sistema mundial de ayuda humanitaria indican que se está produciendo un fallo en su entrega. También ponen de relieve la extrema carencia de datos fiables que nos ayuden a entender cuánto sufren las poblaciones en crisis y en…