Humanitarian Writes on 45 Years of International-Aid Experience
By M.J. Prest
Senior Editor, Solutions
January 26, 2006 | Read Time: 2 minutes
To Bear Witness: A Journey of Healing and Solidarity
by Kevin M. Cahill
Kevin M. Cahill, an American doctor who specializes in tropical medicine, chronicles the 45 years he spent providing emergency medical care to people in Ireland, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, Somalia, and other countries afflicted by poverty and war. His humanitarian work began with some of the poorest people in Calcutta and has spanned decades of famine, epidemics, wars, and other catastrophes around the world.
In this volume, Dr. Cahill compiles articles he has written over the years for journals, newspapers, and other books expounding his views on international public-health issues. The articles blend perspectives from his medical practice, his work as an activist, and his direct interactions with people affected by public-health policies.
For example, in a 1983 essay on the earliest stages of the AIDS crisis in Europe, Haiti, and the United States, he criticizes politicians and public-health experts for not attending to the disease with the same fervor as they devoted to other epidemics—an apathy that Dr. Cahill attributes to bias against the earliest victims of AIDS, gay people and drug addicts.
He notes in an article written a decade later that widespread HIV infection among soldiers and the paltry annual health budgets in most African nations are not “purely medical concerns.” He asserts the scope of the epidemic calls for international-aid organizations to push for changes in public-health policies as well as provide medical treatment.
To that end, in 1992 Dr. Cahill founded the Center for International Health and Cooperation, in New York, which works with several agencies of the United Nations. He offers a warning for others engaged in international disaster-relief efforts: “Aid offered without respect for the rights of an independent people will almost always result in counterproductive misunderstanding, damaging both donor and recipient.”
Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2546 Belmont Avenue, University Box L, Bronx, N.Y. 10458; (718) 817-4795; fax (718) 817-4785; http://www.fordhampress.com; 270 pages; $24.95; ISBN 0-8232-2506-2.
