The world's emergency room The growing threat to doctors, nurses, and humanitarian workers

In a book written before the recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital, VanRooyen—who's served as an emergency physician in more than 30 war-racked countries over the last 25 years—shows how dangerous the work has become. He also argues that loss of medical personnel inevitably endangers civilian populations through loss of medical services. [Page 64]. (c) Copyright 2015 Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Drawing on the personal experiences and those of his colleagues in international humanitarian medicine, the director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative looks at the alarming rise in violence against doctors and aid workers, demonstrates the urgent need to reverse it and explores how that can be accomplished.

Explores the increasing threat that humanitarian workers are faced with, and discusses steps that are being taken to raise awareness and increase safety, particularly through organizations like the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.

The director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative looks at the alarming rise in violence against doctors and aid workers, and how to stop itTwenty years ago, the most common cause of death for medical humanitarians and other aid workers was traffic accidents; today, it is violent attacks. And the death of each doctor, nurse, paramedic, midwife, and vaccinator is multiplied untold times in the vulnerable populations deprived of their care. In a 2005 report, the ICRC found that for every soldier killed in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than 60 civilians died due to loss of immunizations and other basic health services.The World's Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers documents this dangerous trend, demonstrates the urgent need to reverse it, and explores how that can be accomplished. Drawing on VanRooyen's personal experiences and those of his colleagues in international humanitarian medicine, he takes 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, emphasizing how they imperil the key doctrine of medical neutrality, and what to do about it.