Tag: HHI

  • Nation & World

    Hospital rises in the grass

    Sandwiched between mountains and a large lake, a field hospital has sprung up amid the thorny trees and dried grass at Fond Parisien, near the border with the Dominican Republic. The site has become an oasis of medical care and hope in this still-reeling nation, where many thousands died and many more have been injured.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Talking terror

    The two men sit close, knees almost touching, in a mud-walled hut in the Congolese village of Katokota.

    15 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Looking horror in the face

    Imani was just 15 when soldiers from the rebel group Interahamwe found her on the road in a remote region in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

    11 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Simulating chaos to teach order

    A troubled piece of Africa came to North Andover, Mass., last weekend (April 24-26) as more than 50 students from a collaborative, three-university humanitarian program took part in a hands-on outdoor field course that simulated an emergency on the border between Chad and Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Congo: Just here suffering

    Imani was just 15 when soldiers from the rebel group Interahamwe found her on the road in a remote region in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Congo: The facts of gender violence

    Researchers from the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative are working to understand the volume and impact of gender violence by analyzing data provided by survivors.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Congo: Panzi-HHI partnership

    Harvard’s partnership with a Congolese hospital seeks to understand the causes of the violence against women that hangs like a toxic cloud over a huge swath of this enormous country in Africa’s midsection.

    1 minute
  • Nation & World

    Experts get down to business at 2009 Humanitarian Action Summit

    In December 2000, Dorothy Sewe and her family — fleeing tribal violence in Kenya — escaped across the border into Tanzania. In the first few days, all 17 huddled under plastic bags in the pouring rain. They camped outside the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, begging for help.

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Disasters, and how to cope with them

    Nine out of 10 disasters in the world are related to climate change — the consequence of “a new normal of extreme weather,” said Sir John Holmes. He talked about an accelerating pace of floods, drought, heat waves, and catastrophic storms.

    4 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Surgeon describes horrors that ensue when rape is a ‘weapon of war’

    Denis Mukwege, a recent visitor to Harvard, is slow-spoken, weary, and grave. And well he might be. For nearly a decade, Mukwege has been doctor to thousands of women raped in the course of a long civil war in south central Africa — in effect, that continent’s World War II — which has so far…

    5 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Newsmakers

    Visiting scientist Frederick “Skip” Burkle, a senior fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), was recently elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM). New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd will deliver the Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics Thursday (Oct. 25) at 6 p.m. in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the…

    2 minutes
  • Nation & World

    Humanitarian aid professionals strategize

    The public and private agencies that respond to war and disasters sometimes respond disastrously — and it’s time to do something about it. That was the basic message of a three-day Humanitarian Health Conference at Harvard Sept. 6-8, which drew more than 120 emergency physicians, epidemiologists, and professional aid workers from 68 organizations.

    6 minutes