Dimensions
162 x 243 x 23mm
Twenty years ago, the most common cause of death for medical humanitarians and other aid workers was traffic accidents; today, it is violent attacks. The death of each doctor, nurse, paramedic, midwife, and vaccinator is multiplied untold times in the vulnerable populations deprived of their care. In 2015, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched the latest findings of the Healthcare in Danger Project, a report that document attacks on healthcare workers, hospitals and ambulances that represent a deliberate attempt to destroy health care for communities in conflict. The report showed 2,398 such attacks over a two-year period in eleven countries, including murder and hospital bombings, leading to the critical lack of healthcare for populations facing war.
The World's Emergency Room documents this dangerous trend, demonstrates the urgent need to reverse it, and explores how that can be accomplished. VanRooyen draws on personal experiences and those of his colleagues in international humanitarian medicine, taking readers into clinics, wards, and field hospitals around the world, where medical personnel work with inadequate resources under dangerous conditions to care for civilians imperiled by conflict. VanRooyen undergirds these compelling stories with data and historical context, emphasising how they undermine the key doctrine of medical neutrality, and what to do about it.
