Star lecture – Amy Hughes

On Thursday, 3 March 2016, Dr Amy Hughes, Clinical Academic Lecturer in Emergency Response at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), delivered a lecture titled ‘Health Care in Humanitarian Emergencies', which you can watch below.

How do we provide healthcare for populations affected by humanitarian emergencies? What infrastructure is needed to strengthen local health capacity and assist foreign medical teams providing emergency aid? What other factors – such as culture, politics, logistics, and anthropology – influence the effectiveness of humanitarian response?

Drawing on examples from post‐conflict in northern Sri Lanka, Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the West Africa Ebola outbreak and the recent Nepal earthquake, Dr Hughes explores the complexities, challenges and approaches to delivering health care during and in the aftermath of such events.

This lecture provides an insight into the world of health care in humanitarian emergencies, highlighting the multiple factors affecting this.

The University of Manchester and the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society came together in partnership with the shared aim of inspiring and educating young people in the North West through this inaugural lecture by Dr Amy Hughes.

You can also find more information at the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society website.

Dr Amy Hughes

Amy is a Clinical Academic Lecturer in Emergency Response at the HCRI at The University of Manchester. She was awarded an MBE in December 2015 for services to humanitarian and emergency medicine.

She is engaged heavily in the development of the UK International Emergency Trauma and Medical Registers – established to draw together clinicians interested in responding as part of a medical/trauma team to sudden onset disasters and humanitarian emergencies. The registers are hosted by UK-Med and funded by the Department for International Development. The aim of the registers is to provide a structured approach to the training and deployment of teams composed of a variety of health care workers in order to ensure a governed, needs-based, appropriate and co-ordinated response.

Combined with the lectureship Amy is completing a PhD exploring the role of foreign medical teams in sudden onset disasters and, along with colleagues, contributes to the Foreign Medical Team Working Group, WHO.

In her work at the HCRI she is a course convenor for the Emergency Humanitarian Assistance module and Global Health Diploma. Combining academia with clinical work, Amy is also an emergency medicine clinician in Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Previous clinical work includes: London’s Air Ambulance; Kent, Surrey Sussex Helicopter Emergency Medical Service working as part of a pre-hospital care team; a seven-month mission with Médecins Sans Frontières in northern Sri Lanka establishing and running an emergency unit in a resource- constrained post conflict environment; retrieval registrar with Careflight and The Royal Flying Doctors, Australia.

Amy completed the Diploma of Tropical Medicine in 2006 and has a European master’s in Disaster Medicine. Her particular interest lies in improving the training and knowledge for health care professionals wishing to work in complex humanitarian environments.