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November 7, 2023
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71203
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November 7, 2023
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v2.1 Reference

We Wait for a Miracle

Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced

The story of how we treat refugees is a story about our own moral failings, and the barriers that refugees face in accessing health care can be as difficult to overcome as any other adversity in their path to stability.

Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are displaced within their own countries. In We Wait for a Miracle, Muhammad H. Zaman shares poignant stories across continents to highlight the health care experiences of refugees and forced migrants. For many of these people, health risks unfortunately become part of the fabric of everyday life as they navigate new countries that treat them with varying degrees of care and indifference.

Across widely varied local systems, countries of origin, health concerns, and other contexts, Zaman finds that barriers to health care share these key factors: trust, social network, efficiency of the health system, and the regulatory framework of the host environment. A combination of these factors explains difficulties in accessing health care across the geographic and geopolitical spectrum and challenges the existing global public health framework, which is based entirely on local context. In moving stories that span seven countries—Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Colombia, and Venezuela—Zaman shares the everyday struggles of refugees, the internally displaced, and the stateless in accessing the health care they need.

This unique look at an urgent global challenge addresses the issue of access for populations that are currently in distress due to civil war, economic collapse, or a conflict driven by external state actors. Organic social networks and trust, rather than top-down policies, are often what save the lives of migrants, refugees, and the stateless. Focusing on that trust—and its deficit—in camps, urban slums, hospitals, and clinics, Zaman combines personal and journalistic accounts of refugees with broad systemic analysis on global health care access to compare problems and solutions in different regions and provide holistic policy and practice recommendations for refugees, internally displaced persons, and stateless populations.

About the Author

Muhammad H. Zaman (BOSTON, MA) is the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and International Health at Boston University. He is director of the Center on Forced Displacement at Boston University. He is the author of Bitter Pills: The Global War on Counterfeit Drugs and Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle between People and Pathogens.

Endorsements

"Zaman highlights the difficulties faced by millions of individuals today who are forced to be refugees or displaced persons and demonstrates that providing health care to these vulnerable populations requires different, localized solutions. Brought to life by very real stories, We Wait For a Miracle was a pleasure to read and very close to my heart."

- Faisal Sultan, Chief Executive Officer, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Research Center

"Captivating and compelling, We Wait For a Miracle narrates the stories of how displaced people around the world struggle to access health and social services and provides unique solutions for how to address this global problem."

- Christopher G. Orach, MBChB, DPH, MMed PH, MPH, PhD, Makerere University

"Combining personal stories with detailed analysis, Muhammad Zaman's considered, sensitive study shines a spotlight on the disparities in health care for refugees and other displaced people, crucially bringing their voices and experiences to the fore."

- Jane McAdam AO, Director of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney

"In this beautiful book, Zaman pushes past statistics and stereotypes to write with complexity, urgency, and insight about health crises facing displaced people. His fast-paced narrative shows individuals in impossible situations who nonetheless construct webs of trust, compassion, and loving care that most of the world rarely sees. This is a must read."

- Jessica Goudeau, author of After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America
Johns Hopkins University Press
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Hardback
November 7, 2023
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