num_pages: 240
description: 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 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.
language: English
title: The World's Emergency Room: The Growing Threat to Doctors, Nurses, and Humanitarian Workers
publisher: St. Martin's Press