Humanitarian Aid
Encounters with People in Need
by Joachim Gardemann
Joachim Gardemann outlines his encounters and experiences as a pediatrician in crisis zones while working for the Red Cross all over the world. He describes people in existential emergency situations, who have been traumatized but survived a genocide on the border with Rwanda. People who have fled from civil wars in Congo or escaped from the Kosovo war. He traces the suffering of people in Iran, China and Haiti after losing their relatives and all their possessions in severe earthquakes. At their moments of greatest vulnerability, in the shelters and dirt of a refugee camp in Jordan, he meets people who have fled from the turmoil of the civil wars in Sudan and Syria. He sketches poignant portraits of the victims of the tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka. He gives a striking account of the devastation wrought by the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone. He creates a worthy memorial to those who died of Ebola, who lost their lives as doctors and nurses in the fight against Ebola as well as to those who survived.