H1. The meanings of “success” and “failure” in the history of humanitarian medicine Lisa Haushofer, University of Amsterdam (chair) - Maria Cullen, University of Manchester: The nutritional Success Story of the Twenty-First century? Plumpy'Nut in Historical Perspective
- Bertrand Taithe, University of Manchester: Revisiting Goma 1994: Cholera, Failure, and Renewal in Humanitarian Medicine?
- Chimwemwe Phiri, University of Manchester: Malawi: The Poster Child of Humanitarian Medicine?
What constitutes the history of humanitarian medicine: medicine in humanitarian circumstances or the shaping of a normative discourse and sets of practices defined by key epistemic moments (Taithe, 2014)? This panel brings together four research papers from the "Developing Humanitarian Medicine" project (University of Manchester, 2023-2028) on the heuristic devices used by humanitarians, to reflect on success, failure, and how humanitarian interventions have been historicised (or not). The papers bring into dialogue different registers of narration and recollection which, over time, have become bedrocks of normative reflection.
We consider how the fluidity of the concept of humanitarian medicine has largely been produced by acts of remembering and forgetting. Our papers use African case studies from 1980 to the 2010s to explore discursive narratives of success based on the introduction of specific products (e.g., Plumpy’Nut for severe acute malnutrition) and sets of guidelines and coordination (e.g., Somalia’s primary health care-focused Refugee Health Unit), and, conversely, the perception of abject failure of uncoordinated response to a technically less challenging epidemic (cholera response and the Rwanda evaluation leading to the Sphere Project, Glasman 2021).
The links between global health, international development, and humanitarian medicine have been especially blurred in some sites of intervention, where many humanitarian and development actors have long contributed to the provisions of the ministry of health. As one of our papers explores, in Malawi, the provision of HIV chronic treatments and more recently oncology and palliative care reshapes our understanding of humanitarian medicine, as defined by what self-identified humanitarians do. More broadly, our panel draws on the burgeoning body of scholarship in global health history on the meanings of success (Birn 2009 and 2011, Winters 2024), which highlight the power of using archival methodologies to critically interrogate success narratives emanating from institutions of power.
Learning objectives:
-Develop historical perspectives on the nature of humanitarian medicine and of its key exponents and debates in the 1980s-2010s
-Engage with the nexus between development and humanitarian action through the examination of African case studies
-Critically appreciate the context of clinical guidelines production and debates
-Reflect on the meanings of success and failure in emergency medical situations
