BACKGROUND At 14:48 on 12 May 2008 an earthquake of magnitude 8.0 struck the Wenchuan area of Sichuan province, China. A decision to offer/receive UK medical assistance was agreed at a Sino/British political level and a medical team was despatched to the earthquake area. METHODS This study describes the team's experience during the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and the following 18 mo...

Following a proposal made by Sweden at a meeting of the EC Humanitarian Aid Committee (HAC) in May 2003, a group of representatives of donor organisations agreed to undertake a collaborative evaluation process focussing on the theme of and the collaborative response, and when does the need for assistance end? These critical issues are discussed in detail in the report and recommendations on how...

ENGINEERING Correction for “Inkjet-printed point-of-care immunoassay on a nanoscale polymer brush enables subpicomolar detection of analytes in blood,” by Daniel Y. Joh, Angus M. Hucknall, Qingshan Wei, Kelly A. Mason, Margaret L. Lund, Cassio M. Fontes, Ryan T. Hill, Rebecca Blair, Zackary Zimmers, Rohan K. Achar, Derek Tseng, Raluca Gordan, Michael Freemark, Aydogan Ozcan, and Ashutosh Chilko...

This article explores the challenges that emerge at the intersection of economies of compassion and terror: local, national, and international forms of humanitarian assistance; security practices in insecure social and institutional environments; questions of victimization and global reparations; and quests for justice, as revealed through an analysis of political violence and humanitarian inte...

The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo for decades have been living in a situation of chronic crisis. Violence, population displacement and the destruction of infrastructure and health services have devastated the health of the population. In 2001, Médicins Sans Frontières conducted a survey in five areas of western and central DRC to assess mortality, access to health-care, vaccination...

United States foreign assistance to Pakistan has always been driven by security considerations. By 2010, US counter-terrorism and stabilisation objectives resulted in Pakistan becoming the second largest recipient of US foreign aid globally. Given the policy impact of the assumption that aid promotes US security objectives in Pakistan, there is surprisingly little analysis or evidence of its ef...

The number of disasters, both natural as well as man-made, has been increasing in frequency in the recent years. This leads to short as well as long-term effects on food security and shelter, requiring humanitarian assistance. This article aims to identify the principles and standards that are applicable to food and shelter related aid that needs to be provided by the co-operation of the local ...

Food insecurity in particular is at emergency levels. On 22 October 2015 three UN agencies alerted that Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) estimates that 34% of the South Sudanese population (3.9 million) are severely food insecure (3.1 million in Crisis -IPC Phase 3 and 800 000 in Emergency IPC phase 4). Of most concern are the estimated 40 000 people in Unity State who face c...

The dangerous nexus of climate change, rapid population growth, and conflict has pushed several poor regions of the world— notably in rural areas of the Sahel, the Horn, and the Great Lakes regions of Africa—into states of seemingly permanent crisis (Fig. 1). The distinction between short-run humanitarian response and development assistance aimed at longer-run outcomes has grown increasingly bl...

In the past decade, many countries have embarked upon the difficult transition from armed conflict toward reconciliation and reconstruction. The international community's role in this transition has shifted from narrow humanitarian and relief activities to more comprehensive efforts to foster sustainable peace. At the same time, the community has shifted from a stepped approach from relief to d...