responded to it (p. 14). The book explains the author’s effort to understand what she calls the “double-edged morale” of international development organizations, whose goal, since the 1980s, seems to have been the creation of a new, post– Cold War political model, promoted in part through the distribution of humanitarian aid. The five chapter headings— “The Anthropologist’s Toolkit,” “First Ste...

BACKGROUND The United States Department of Defense participates in more than 500 missions every year, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, as part of medical stability operations. This study assessed perceptions of active-duty physicians regarding these activities and related these findings to the retention and overall satisfaction of healthcare professionals. METHODS AND FI...

BACKGROUND Commencing in 1998, the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been a humanitarian disaster, but has drawn little response from the international community. To document rates and trends in mortality and provide recommendations for political and humanitarian interventions, we did a nationwide mortality survey during April-July, 2004. METHODS We used a stratified three-stage, ho...

For more than a year Ukraine has been torn asunder by a bitter conflict that has triggered a growing humanitarian crisis. But amidst the chaos, the country has one important asset: human capital. “The situation is very difficult and it’s thanks to our health workers that this country’s health-care system is still running,” says Dr Tatiana Dubinina, chief medical officer at the Ukrainian health ...

Humanitarian agencies are increasingly engaged in research in conflict and post-conflict settings. This is justified by the need to improve the quality of assistance provided in these settings and to collect evidence of the highest standard to inform advocacy and policy change. The instability of conflict-affected areas, and the heightened vulnerability of populations caught in conflict, calls ...

There is often a gap between promises made politically and the will to implement these promises meaningfully. One example is Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR). CAMR was enacted following a WTO decision that changed global intellectual property rules, allowing countries to issue compulsory licences for the production and export of domestically patented medicines to countries without pha...

We thank all the Médecins Sans Frontières coordination and field teams involved for their help, particularly Fazil Tefera and Sandrina Simons. We acknowledge the invaluable assistance of many Angolan translators, and thank local authorities for their support and hospitality. Contributors: See bmj.com Funding: The study was financed entirely by Médecins Sans Frontières. Competing interests: None...

The pervasive use of social media has generated unprecedented amounts of social data. Social media provides easily an accessible platform for users to share information. Mining social media has its potential to extract actionable patterns that can be beneficial for business, users, and consumers. Social media data are vast, noisy, unstructured, and dynamic in nature, and thus novel challenges a...

Apart from altruistic reasons, NGOs may engage in developing countries under conditions of conflict and war in order to secure funding and survive in the ‘market’ of humanitarian relief and development assistance. Applying a difference-in-difference-in-differences approach, we analyze empirically whether the presence of US-based NGOs in Afghanistan and Iraq improved their chances of external fu...

The global burden of trauma and surgical conditions fall disproportionately on lowand middle-income countries (LMICs). 2 Inopportunely, developing countries are least equipped to provide essential surgical care. Consequently, LMICs have a significant burden of unmet surgical needs. When these fragile health systems are disrupted by conflict, a natural disaster or an epidemic the volume and qual...