Health Care in Contexts of Risk, Uncertainty, and Hybridity (Military and Humanitarian Health Ethics)

This book sheds light on various ethical challenges military and humanitarian health care personnel (HCP) face while working in adverse conditions. Contexts of armed conflict, hybrid wars or other forms of violence short of war, as well as natural disasters, all have in common that ordinary circumstances can no longer be taken for granted. Hence, the provision of health care has to adapt, for example, to a different level of risk, to scarce resources, or uncommon approaches due to external incentives or requirements. This affects the practice of health care as well as its ethics. This book offers a panoramic overview on various challenges healthcare faces in extraordinary situations and provides new insights from practitioners’ as well as from academic scholars’ perspectives.

Daniel Messelken is a research associate at the Center for Ethics at Zurich University and leader of the Zurich Center for Military Medical Ethics (www.cmme.uzh.ch). He also serves as Head Ethics Teacher for the Center of Reference for Education on IHL and Ethics of the International Committee of Military Medicine and is member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Military Ethics in Europe (EuroISME). Dr. Messelken studied Philosophy and Political Science in Leipzig and Paris (1998-2004) and received his PhD in philosophy from the University of Leipzig in 2010. Besides Military Medical Ethics, his main research fields include Just War Theory, the Morality of Violence, Military Ethics, and Applied Ethics more generally.

David Winkler is director of the Center of Reference for Education on International Humanitarian Law and Ethics of the International Committee of Military Medicine (www.cimm-icmm.com). He is a medical doctor specializing in neurology andholds a Ph.D. in neurobiology. Lieutenant Colonel Winkler is a staff officer in the Swiss Armed Forces Medical Services Directorate. He conducts clinical and academic work at the Cantonal Hospital Baselland, and the University Hospital Basel, Switzerland.