Medical Aspects of Peacekeeping Operations: Trends and Courses of Action

Un extracto de la tesis:

In recent years, peacekeeping operations (PKOs) have been larger in scale, more mobile, and conducted over vast areas of remote, rugged, and harsh geography with multi-faceted modalities, but with an expectation of financial restraint and austerity. PKOs have been increasingly involved in dangerous areas with ill-defined boundaries, simmering internecine armed conflict, and disregard on the part of some local parties for peacekeepers’ security and role. In addition, PKOs have become more “robust.” Thus, for post-Cold War missions, the odds of death from hostile action have increased by 50%, while the odds of death due to disease have remained constant and high and the odds of death by accident have decreased by 25%. A statistically positive and significant relationship exists between the size and complexity of a mission and a higher probability of trauma or death, especially as a result of hostile actions or disease. Therefore, in the interest of “force protection” and optimizing operations, a key component of PKOs is health care and medical treatment. Considering the current state of peacekeeping worldwide, the more than 100,000 United Nations (UN) military and civilian personnel deployed all need and deserve high-quality medical care. The expectation is that PKO medical support will conform to the general intent and structure of PKOs to become more streamlined, portable, mobile, compartmentalized, and specialized, but also more varied and complex to address the medical aspects of these missions cost-efficiently.