Editorials

Humanitarian action: the duty of all doctors

Humanitarian is defined by Webster's dictionary as "having concern for or helping to improve the welfare and happiness of mankind." In that sense all doctoring is humanitarian. A second definition goes further: "a person actively engaged in promoting human welfare and social reforms." Many doctors are not active in promoting social reform, but should they be? Every doctor knows that those who live on the margins of our world—those who are poor, vulnerable, elderly, addicted, insane, imprisoned, unemployed, discriminated against, tortured, homeless, condemned, caught up in wars—have higher rates of sickness and ill health. Doctors should be paying great attention to those people, but too often, like everyone else, they neglect them. The poor have greater difficulty than the rich in accessing health care; prisoners get a second class service; doctors propose that the addicted—smokers, drug misusers—should be denied treatments like coronary bypass grafting. This issue of the BMJ has . . . [Full text of this article]

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Relevant Article

Humanitarian issues

John Nicholson, Neil Gerrard, Evan Harris, W James Appleyard, David Southall, and Charles Shepherd
BMJ 1998 316: 76. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

• Heath, I., Haines, A. (2000). Open invitation from the International Poverty and Health Network to all health professionals. Inj. Prev. 6: 71-72 [Full text]  
• HEATH, I., HAINES, A., SMITH, R. (2000). Open invitation from the International Poverty and Health Network to all health professionals. Br J Ophthalmol 84: 236-237 [Full text]  
• Tomlin, P J, Berlin, A. (1998). UN Declaration of Human Rights. BMJ 316: 1020-1020 [Full text]  
• Johnson, G. (1998). Two actions are possible for doctors wanting to promote human welfare in Africa. BMJ 316: 393-393 [Full text]  
• Nicholson, J., Gerrard, N., Harris, E., Appleyard, W J., Southall, D., Shepherd, C. (1998). Humanitarian issues. BMJ 316: 76-76 [Full text]  

Rapid Responses:

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War and medicine

Dian Harun
bmj.com, 21 Dec 1998 [Full text]