Bertrand Taithe

A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of the Surgical and Rehabilitation Response to the Earthquake in Haiti, January 2010

BACKGROUNDnThe disaster response environment in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake represented a complex healthcare challenge. This study was designed to identify challenges during the Haiti disaster response.nnnMETHODSnQualitative and quantitative study of injured patients carried out six months after the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti to review the surgical inputs of foreign medical teams.nnnRESULTSnStudy findings revealed a need during the response for improved medical records and data gathering for regulation, quality assurance, coordination and resource allocation; wider adherence to standard patient referral mechanisms and protocols linking surgical service provision with appropriate hospital and community based rehabilitation services; a greater recognition of the impact of non-amputation injury, and the need for patients to have a greater say in their management and to be the keepers of their medical records. Key first steps to improving the international response are a minimum dataset and uniform reporting.nnnCONCLUSIONnThis study showed that challenges for emergency medical response during the Haiti Earthquake involved issues of accountability, professional ethics, standards-of-care, unmet needs, patient agency and expected outcomes for patients in such settings:

Disasters and a register for foreign medical teams

The tsunami in Asia and earthquakes in Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia, and Haiti at the start of the 21st century, and now the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, have emphasised people’s continuing willingness to respond to large-scale disasters overseas. However, these individual acts of altruism are tempered by criticisms about lack of preparedness, coordination, and appropriate skills. In the UK, many of these volun teers work in the National Health Service (NHS), and a sudden exodus of highly skilled staff can put considerable strain on their institutions. To address these issues, a formal register of UK surgeons, anaesthetists, emergency physicians and nurses, and other supporting medical, nursing, and paramedical staff has been established. The register has been developed with the UK Government’s Department of Health and Department for International Development, and with non-governmental organi sations including Medical Emergency Relief International (Merlin). Although the idea to create a register has been considered after each major event, only now has suffi cient momentum been gathered to see its implementation. Governments, non-governmental organisations, and UN agencies can select health-care workers from the register and be assured that they are ready to go and are fi t for purpose. The register is supported by the Faculty of Pre-Hospital Care of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the UK College of Emergency Medicine, the British Association of Immediate Care Schemes, the British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges in the UK, the UK’s Royal College of Nursing, and the British Medical Association. Existing collaboration with other countries will be strengthened. An important role of the register will be to foster training. The core competencies for deployment to acute surgical emergencies (most noticeably earthquakes) are probably more easily identifi ed and agreed on than are those for longer-term development work. Therefore the register will concentrate its remit on these emergencies. This focus also chimes with WHO’s initiative to update its guidelines for the use of foreign fi eld-hospitals. After experts met in Cuba in December, 2010, an ad-hoc working group (chaired by ADR) was formed to explore registration of foreign medical teams, both before and after deployment to sudden-onset disasters. We declare that we have no confl icts of interest.

Reinventing (French) universalism: religion, humanitarianism and the 'French Doctors

Since the Biafran War, the Médecins sans frontières (MSF) and Médecins du Monde (MDM) movements have become the incarnation of modern French internationalism and universalism. These organisations have had a chequered and conflictual history. From the late 1970s the movements became increasingly associated with media developments, while its main protagonists became absorbed into politics. The Île‐de‐Lumière ship for Vietnam signalled a crucial turning point in the use of the media and in allying with traditional intellectual forces, while crises elsewhere in the early 1990s led to increased self‐reflexivity. Using the key texts of this phase, this article analyses how these movements looked back at the 1930s, and how two traditions of French humanitarianism found an echo among French doctors, the first being the religious movements representing a Catholic tradition of humanitarianism, the second being the secular post‐revolutionary tradition. Reconciling both traditions in humanitarian interventions, the ‘French doctors’ have developed a new universalism that transcends the right–left divide.

Data hubris? Humanitarian information systems and the mirage of technology

Abstract This article looks at the promise of technology to revolutionise humanitarian action, especially in terms of the gathering and use of data. With many heralding a ‘data revolution’, the opportunities and enthusiasm for using social media and SMS data in crisis response are on the rise. The article constructs an analytical framework in order to scrutinise the three main claims made on behalf of technologically advanced humanitarian information systems: that they can access data more accurately, more quickly, and alter power relations in emancipatory ways. It does so in relation to two aspects of digital humanitarianism: visual technology and crisis mapping, and big data. The article is partly informed by a historical perspective, but also by interview and other material that suggests some of the claims made on behalf of technology are exaggerated. In particular, we argue that the enthusiasm for the data is vastly outstripped by the capacity to meaningfully analyse it. We conclude by scoping the implications of the future technological evolution of humanitarianism, in particular by examining how technology contributes to what Duffield terms ‘post-modern humanitarianism’.

‘Heroes of Charity?’ Between Memory and Hagiography: Colonial Medical Heroes in the Era of Decolonisation

This article focuses on two medical figures of significance, each of whom came to embody a different aspect of the colonial development ideal in the post-colonial period. Dr Eugène Jamot and Dr Albert Schweitzer became associated with competing forms of development or humanitarian work through the work of their hagiographers and commentators. While this article shows how their reputation resisted the end of their original colonial setting and how it was reinvented in the light of theological and medical interpretations of their lives, it also argues that this memorialisation became closely associated with fragmented groups and to private celebrations of their lives. Ultimately this amounts to a privatisation of heroic reputations.

Attacks on medical missions: overview of a polymorphous reality: the case of Médecins Sans Frontières

AbstractnThe aim of this article is to carry out a preliminary analysis of issues relating to the types of violence that are directed against humanitarian medical missions Starting from the observation that violence can cause some degree of disruption for a medical organisation such as M�decins Sans Fronti�res, despite its wide experience which has brought it much wisdom and generated numerous and sporadic responses to such events, the article offers a more subtle analysis of terms and of situations of violence so as to contribute to the establishment of a research project and, in a second phase, to an awareness-raising campaign focusing on these complex phenomena.

From the Purse and the Heart: Exploring Charity, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights in France

The evolution in the material and political expression of French moral consciousness is reflected in the histories of charity, humanitarianism, and human rights. By bringing together these often disconnected fields, we seek to open new avenues of research and to consider the junctures, discontinuities, and overlap often neglected by historians of humanitarianism (and related movements), welfare, charitable enterprises, religion, and missiology.1 By focusing on practices as well as ideas, we wish to engage with more than the current paradigm of the history of humanitarianism, which tends to concentrate on why people began to feel compassion or empathy for an enslaved, suffering, or persecuted group during certain historical periods, whereas earlier (or later) generations showed a lack of such compassion.2 The practices with which we wish to engage in this special issue encompass more than a cultural history of compassion.3 It is not merely a history of the changing outlook on the sufferings of

History, memory and lessons learned for humanitarians

Abstract This article concludes the special issue on the history of humanitarian aid by reflecting on the role of memory and history in relation to humanitarian aid. To address a special issue as a conclusion is to embrace the opportunity to reflect on its papers, aims and ambitions. It is also for us an opportunity to reflect on the role history has for a community of practice often forging ahead in response to the latest demands and emergencies. Historical thinking is now coming into greater salience for the world of humanitarian aid because, we argue, the ‘humanitarian sector’ has grown and aged – and professionalized and institutionalized.

Decolonising Imperial Heroes: Britain and France

The heroes of the British and French empires stood at the vanguard of the vibrant cultures of imperialism that emerged in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet imperial heroes did not disappear after 1945 as British and French flags were lowered around the world. On the contrary, their reputations underwent a variety of metamorphoses in both the former metropoles and the former colonies. The introduction to this special issue of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History presents an overview of the changing history and historiography of imperial heroes half a century after the end of empire.

Evil, Barbarism and Empire

List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Liberal Civilisation and its Discontents: Evil, Barbarism and Empire T.Crook , R.Gill & B.Taithe PART I: METROPOLITAN EVILS Evil in Question: The Victorian Social and the Politics of Prostitution, 1830-1900 T.Crook Terror, Spectacle and the Press: Anarchist Outrage in Edwardian England D.Speicher And I am the God of Destruction!: Fu Manchu and the Construction of Asiatic Evil in the Novels of Arthur Sarsfield Ward, 1912-1939 A.Taylor PART II: IMPERIAL EVILS The Politics of Italianism: Reynoldss Newspaper, the Indian Mutiny, and the Radical Critique of Liberal Imperialism in Mid-Victorian Britain E.F.Biagini The Victorian Lexicon of Evil: Frederic Harrison, the Positivists and the Language of International Politics H.S. Jones PART III: GEOPOLITICS OF EVIL Evil, Liberalism and the Imperial Designs of the Catholic Church, 1867-1905 B.Taithe Now I have seen evil, and I cannot be silent about it: Arnold J. Toynbee and his Encounters with Atrocity, 1915-1923 R.Gill Atrocity Narratives and Inter-Imperial Rivalry: Britain, Germany and the Treatment of Native Races, 1904-1939 C.Twomey PART IV: AGENTS OF EVIL Conrads Horror: Heart of Darkness and the Imaginary of Power T.Osborne The Lives of Others: The Defeat of Evil or the Evil of Defeat? S.McCracken Islam, Violence and the New Barbarism T.Jacoby Index