Medical Humanitarianism

Sharon Alane Abramowitz, Catherine Panter-Brick

Medical humanitarianism--medical and other health-related initiatives undertaken in conditions born of conflict, neglect, or disaster--has a prominent and growing presence in international development, global health, and human security interventions. [This book] features twelve essays that fold back the curtains on the individual experiences, institutional practices, and cultural forces that shape humanitarian practice. Contributors offer vivid and often dramatic insights into the experiences of local humanitarian workers in the Afghan-Pakistan border areas, national doctors coping with influxes of foreign humanitarian volunteers in Haiti, military doctors working for the British Army in Iraq and Afghanistan, and human rights-oriented volunteers within the Israeli medical bureaucracy. They analyze our contested understanding of lethal violence in Darfur, food-crisis responses in...