When wounds travel

This article explores trauma as a form of ‘social wound’, entrenched in the intersections of local histories and social experiences of violence and displacement. Building on ethnographic accounts of displacement of Iraqis in Lebanon in the wake of the US occupation of Iraq (2003–2011), I ask: what happens when wounds travel across different social worlds and local histories of violence? The account presented tells the story of Hussein, an Iraqi refugee who escaped Iraq during the height of sectarian violence (2006–2007) and claimed asylum status as a torture victim in Lebanon. For displaced people like Hussein, the experiences of violence and uprooting were amplified by the uncertainties of everyday life in Beirut. His case shows that the selective sorting of refugees around questions of vulnerability and victimhood weaves further tensions into the social fabric of displaced peoples and their host communities. In contexts of layered histories of war, violence, displacement, and humanitarian interventions, which characterize much of the Middle East, wounds constitute the interstitial tissue of the social; they are what brings people together and what sets them apart. An ethnography of such ‘travelling wounds’ might account for the complex ways that discourses of trauma and histories of violence unravel in everyday encounters

Blurred lines

The neutrality of medicine and health care professionals in different conflict settings in the Middle East have come under scrutiny in recent human rights reports, and should be seen as part of the broader fallout of the US-led ‘global war on terror.’ The last two decades of US military attacks on health infrastructures in Iraq and the use of polio-vaccination campaigns to track down ‘terrorists’ are acts of war that have further blurred the lines between health care and warfare. The failure of international legal processes and institutions to prevent such assaults or to prosecute those responsible raises questions about the Eurocentric system of checks and balances that shape international humanitarian law and its invocation as a ‘legal’ and ‘moral’ framework

(Dis)connectivities in wartime: The therapeutic geographies of Iraqi healthcare–seeking in Lebanon

The proliferation of conflicts across borders of Middle Eastern States has transformed the landscapes of health and healthcare across the region. In the case of Iraq, state healthcare has collapsed under the strain of protracted conflicts. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s post-war healthcare system is booming, and becoming more privatised. In this paper, we build on an ethnographic study on the movements and experiences of Iraqi patients in Lebanon to show how one of the consequences of war is the rise of alternative forms of healthcare–seeking practices and survival strategies – a therapeutic geography that is embedded in regional economies and geopolitical relations and reconfigurations. We argue for the need to reimagine the disconnectivity and connectivity of healthcare systems under war and conflict as grounded in the empirical realities and experiences of mobility in the Middle East

Public Health, the Medical Profession, and State Building: A Historical Perspective

تتّبع هذه الدراسة الإسهامات الرئيسية في تطور ونشأة سياسات الصحة العامة في الوطن العربي. وعند القيام بذلك، تبزغ عدة أفكار رئيسية من بين أخرى كثيرة؛ من مثل: تأثير الاستعمار والمواجهة مع الطب الغربي، وعلاقة الصحة العامة ببناء الدولة ومشروع التحديث، ودور مهنة الطب، وكذلك التغيير في السياسات تبعاً لتغيير الواقع السياسي والاقتصادي. ونعتزم تطوير هذه الأفكار الرئيسية وإظهار تفاعلاتها المعقّدة التي تصيب أسس الصحة العامة الحديثة.This chapter highlights the importance of public health in the construction of the modern state. In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman and Egyptian modernizing projects did include public health programs. The colonization went on with these programs, but used the medicalization project as a tool for the colonizers' own interests. During the first decades of independence, health became a right that was guaranteed by the state and important progress was realized. But the crisis of the development model in the 1980s resulted in the emergence of new international as well as local actors, and international agencies and NGOs, including charitable and religious ones played an increasing role

Annexes to IDRC Final Report

This report is an agglomeration of other reports from conferences, curriculum development, presentations, public health, and higher education faculties in the Arab region. It includes several reports on the use of tobacco and water pipes, a bibliography of outputs regarding agriculture, environment and health research, and a policy institute conference agenda on the topic of war and humanitarianism

Antimicrobial resistance in the context of the Syrian conflict : Drivers before and after the onset of conflict and key recommendations

Current evidence describing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the context of the Syrian conflict is of poor quality and sparse in nature. This paper explores and reports the major drivers of AMR that were present in Syria pre-conflict and those that have emerged since its onset in March 2011. Drivers that existed before the conflict included a lack of enforcement of existing legislation to regulate over-the-counter antibiotics and notification of communicable diseases. This contributed to a number of drivers of AMR after the onset of conflict, and these were also compounded by the exodus of trained staff, the increase in overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, the increase in injuries, and economic sanctions limiting the availability of required laboratory medical materials and equipment. Addressing AMR in this context requires pragmatic, multifaceted action at the local, regional, and international levels to detect and manage potentially high rates of multidrug-resistant infections. Priorities are (1) the development of a competent surveillance system for hospital-acquired infections, (2) antimicrobial stewardship, and (3) the creation of cost-effective and implementable infection control policies. However, it is only by addressing the conflict and immediate cessation of the targeting of health facilities that the rehabilitation of the health system, which is key to addressing AMR in this context, can progress.