Humanitarian health workers operate in dangerous and uncertain contexts, in which mistakes and failures are
common, often have severe consequences, and are regularly repeated, despite being documented by many reviews. This Series paper aims to discuss the failures of medical humanitarianism. We describe why some of these recurrent failings, which are often not identified until much later, seem intractable: they are so entrenched in humanitarian action that they cannot be addressed by simple technical fixes.
The aim of this article is to contribute to this understanding of the wider health care system in a post-conflict Somali context, in particular in Somaliland. The fieldwork included participant observation and interviews of several local healers and their patients from the diaspora.
This article analyses the particular relevance of gender for debates about global health and the role for international human rights law in supporting improved health outcomes during public health emergencies. Looking specifically at the recent Ebola and Zika outbreaks, what we find particularly troubling in both cases is the paucity of engagement with human rights language and the diverse backgrounds of women in these locations of crisis, when women-specific advice was being issued.
Community Engagement has been identified as a cross-cutting priority in WHO`s Emergency Reform agenda as outlined in WHO Emergency Reform: Roadmap for Action. The report serves as a blueprint for the reform process and calls for a plan/strategy with “operational capacity for effective community engagement, including work in outbreaks and other health emergencies” is required as part of the Roadmap.To this end, the workshop aimed to clarify WHO’s role in community engagement in outbreaks and emergencies.
The planned outputs and outcomes of the workshop were to obtain:i. Agreement on the scope of community engagement and related approaches in the context of outbreaks and health emergencies ii. Inputs for WHO’s role and functions in community engagement (and related fields) in outbreaks and emergencies iii. Identify linkages to be made with emergency risk communication iv. Recommendations for improving coordination of community engagement interventions during outbreaks and health emergencies v.