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Western Health Workers in Humanitarian Aid

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The Humanitarian Challenge

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Abstract

This paper is a review of a PhD thesis finalized in May 2009. It presents how humanitarian aid workers were attracted, motivated, recruited, and prepared for fieldwork, and how they reported their work experience directly from the field and when they returned home. Data were collected through interviews with experienced aid workers, focus group discussions with presumptive aid workers, analysis of letters from aid workers in the field on MSF’s homepages in Europe, and from Interviews with recruitment officers at some of the main humanitarian organisations.

Health professionals were attracted by the positive images of humanitarian action. They wished to work in teams with like-minded people, and to make a difference in the world. However, this image was not supported by the recruitment officers, or experienced aid workers, who described a complex reality in humanitarian action. The experienced aid workers instead had realised they learned more than they contributed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Maternal and Child Health, Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, University Hospital, Uppsala, S-75185, Sweden

    Magdalena Bjerneld

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  1. Magdalena Bjerneld
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Correspondence to Magdalena Bjerneld .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Agriculture and Food Science, School Of Agriculture & Food Science, Dublin 4, Ireland

    Pat Gibbons

  2. Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Bochum, Germany

    Hans-Joachim Heintze

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Bjerneld, M. (2015). Western Health Workers in Humanitarian Aid. In: Gibbons, P., Heintze, HJ. (eds) The Humanitarian Challenge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13470-3_14

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