Dispatches from the Field – Page 3 – Humanitarian Health Ethics

An Outbreak of Outbreaks: Humanitarian Epidemiology in West Africa

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Dispatches from the Field

by John Pringle

I was disappointed that I couldn’t go to West Africa sooner. The Ebola epidemic was at its peak in the fall of 2014, the same time that I was preparing for my doctoral defence. I watched “Ebola Frontline” which conveyed tragedy and urgency. The documentary followed Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) doctor Javid Abdelmoneim as he cared for Ebola patients in Sierra Leone.[1] It was graphic and raw, something out of Dafoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year. That people had to be turned away from Ebola treatment centres was profoundly inhumane. That traumatized aid workers had to turn people away because treatment centres were overrun, to watch helplessly as people died agonizing deaths in cars or on the ground—was yet another searing reminder of our collective failure, that there is no shared responsibility for global health, and that our notion of ‘international community’ is more dream than reality.

On the Importance of Human Connection: Fear, Ebola and Security

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Dispatches from the Field

by Larissa Fast

Cross-posted with Political Violence @ a Glance

This week marks the first anniversary of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of an Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa. A healthcare worker infected with Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone arrived in the US earlier this month. Another ten of this unnamed health worker’s colleagues were also evacuated to the US for monitoring after exposure to the virus.

The muted media reaction to this latest Ebola case is vastly different than last fall, when the outbreak was at its peak and the first case of Ebola arrived on North American shores. Hysteria mounted, tweets mentioning Ebola skyrocketed, and pictures of people in clinics and in western airports wearing various types of protective gear appeared in the media.

The Sharp Edge of Gratitude

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Dispatches from the Field

Visit ALNAP for a blog on Nicarraguans’ perceptions of humanitarian medical missions by HumEthNet’s Elysée Nouvet.

World Health Assembly’s Recent Look at Health Care Under Attack

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Dispatches from the Field

by Kacper Niburski, HumEthNet contributor

Health can bridge the political. At its core, it is a fundamental cry of the humanity in all of us. Disease does not discriminate nor does sickness pledge partisanships. Only we do.

The sixty-seventh World Health Assembly, housed by the WHO and the United Nations Foundation, focused on this mutual, worldwide aspiration for health as both a governmental tool and an individual right. Attended by delegates from all WHO member states, the conference housed technical briefings, debates, and discussions surrounding global health issues like nutrition, universal health coverage, patient’s rights, and non-communicable diseases.

Complicity, Entaglement and Being Implicated: The Double Effect of Humanitarian Healthcare Practice

Posted by Humanitarian Health Ethics Research Network in Dispatches from the Field

by Lisa Schwartz

On the 4th and 5th of November 2013, Paul Bouvier of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Nicolas Tavaglione of the University of Geneva hosted a symposium called “From humanity to complicity? Ethical duties and dilemmas of humanitarian action in wars and armed conflicts” at the Fondation Brocher, in Hermance, Geneva, Switzerland. Those gathered included philosophers and legal scholars, and members of the ICRC and MSF. It was a productive mix of scholars, practitioners and policy makers that created a welcome space for discussion of ethical theories of complicity in humanitarian healthcare practice.