Humanitarian Crisis and Complex Emergencies – Burden of Disease, Response, and Opportunities for Global Health

Abstract

Humanitarian needs are at an all-time high due to crises becoming increasingly protracted and complex, with more frequent disasters through climate change-intensified hazards, unprecedented global displacement, and changing social, political, and economic contexts. A new normal of humanitarian settings has emerged, i.e., of increasingly connected and urbanized populations, affecting settings beyond low-income countries, including associated trends in ageing, a progressing epidemiological transition, and the use of digital technologies. Actors are challenged to address these emerging needs, while not neglecting persisting health challenges, demanding for resource-constraint systems to address a triple burden of disease in unfamiliar settings. There is also an increased sense of urgency through elevated risks of global pandemics. The pressure to reform traditional humanitarian health efforts and to include systemic and preventive approaches is increasing. However, to fully harness this momentum, there is a need for accelerating research on evidence-based models of care, a more sincere and diverse collaboration agenda and the evolving of a sensible digital humanitarianism. If anything, actors are to expect an acceleration of these trends, through increasingly manifesting climate change impacts, with expanding caseloads and changing needs. Simultaneously, the diversity and heterogeneity of the humanitarian sector are changing, with newly emerging actors and funders, host state assertiveness, and blurring with the development sector. With the interconnectedness of our world, the global health field is to recognize humanitarian crises not as isolated outliers but as fundamental to achieve good health for all.