Mind the Gap: Designing Sustainable Healthcare for Humanitarian Aid

Mind the Gap: Designing Sustainable Healthcare for Humanitarian Aid

Rodrigues Santos, A.L.

Brezet, J.C. (promotor)
Goossens, R.H.M. (promotor)
Wauben, L.S.G.L. (promotor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

2015-07-10

Humanitarian emergencies like the natural disasters in Nepal, Haiti or Pakistan or the thousands of refugees and internally displaced people fleeing from long-term conflict in Syria or South Sudan are likely to increase. To provide healthcare assistance, international humanitarian organizations transfer a variety of medical equipment and staff to an affected area with the purpose of reinforcing or even replacing disrupted healthcare activities. The replacement system they transfer is usually of a high quality standard, and therefore not suitable to be transported, used, maintained and disposed in austere and low-resource settings. In comparison to providing food or shelter assistance, providing safe healthcare in such situations is particularly challenging due to the level of medical and technical expertise required. In this thesis, the unsustainability of the transfer process of medical equipment in humanitarian emergencies is addressed by describing and analysing how the transfer takes place. Furthermore, two field studies in Indonesia and Haiti are presented. The humanitarian sector is increasingly challenged by the need to become more efficient and competitive. The recent adoption of the ‘humanitarian innovation’ concept, defined by words like “sustainable”, “beneficiaries”, and “long-term” brings an encouraging view ahead towards a more sustainable transfer of medical equipment. A combination of field, interview and literature studies, led to the development of a systems design approach to the transfer of medical equipment in humanitarian emergencies that challenges the field of medical design engineering to broaden its scope and disciplinary boundaries.

https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:fcda7795-fc49-4d04-b4ee-829d3b7fe975

97890-6562-3775

Institutional Repository

doctoral thesis

(c) 2015 Rodrigues Santos, A.L.