372 - Book Club: Perilous Medicine—The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2021
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
There is a long history of protecting health care workers during conflict, beginning with an 1859 battle in Italy that gave rise to the first Geneva Convention. But there's never been a "golden age of compliance" and health care workers continue to face considerable risk while trying to reduce human suffering in war zones. Len Rubenstein, a public health and human rights lawyer and faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute for Bioethics, talks with Dr. Josh Sharfstein about his new book that examines the history of health care in armed conflict, how the Conventions have evolved, and where things are today with notable conflicts erupting around the world.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 4 of Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:13.0 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former Commissioner of Health in Baltimore City. |
| 0:20.0 | Our goal is to bring |
| 0:21.7 | scientific evidence and experience to current topics in public health through engaging interviews |
| 0:27.1 | with scientists, community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. |
| 0:32.8 | If you have ideas or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:40.4 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:46.6 | Today, it's the Public Health On Call Book Club. Our topic is war, specifically protecting |
| 0:52.3 | health care workers during violent conflicts. |
| 0:55.2 | Our author is Professor of the Practice, Len Rubenstein, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School |
| 1:00.0 | of Public Health. |
| 1:01.4 | This is a fascinating conversation. |
| 1:04.0 | Let's listen. |
| 1:05.2 | Len Rubenstein, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your new book called Paralless |
| 1:10.6 | Medicine, the Struggle |
| 1:12.0 | to Protect Healthcare from the Violence of War. And before we jump into the book, could you |
| 1:18.9 | tell our listeners the work that you've done in this area in terms of protecting health care |
| 1:24.3 | workers in times of war? Yeah, so thank you for having me, Josh. |
| 1:28.3 | It all started in the 1990s when I went to Bosnia after the war and learned about the |
| 1:36.3 | horrors of the shelling of hospitals in Sarajevo, including a case where there were babies |
| 1:43.3 | in a neonatal unit while the hospital was being |
| 1:46.9 | shelled and they had to get them out of there. |
... |
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