This fall Middle East Report – described by Rashid Khalidi as ‘the best periodical (in English) on the Middle East—bar none’ – from the truly outstanding Middle East Research and Information Project became open access..\

Its latest issue, Health and the Body Politic, (Winter 2020), is available now:

Health and health care have become increasingly ungoverned over the past few decades, in tandem with a broader breakdown of the body politic. Health care workers are finding it increasingly difficult to work in settings of violent conflict and insecurity, rapidly declining health care systems, pervasive corruption and widespread economic mismanagement—all amidst the waning capacity of states to improve the health and wellbeing of their populace. While the Middle East region trains a lot of doctors, few end up staying. The winter issue of Middle East Report explores the interactions of the body politic with health and medicine and examines the entanglements of physical bodies in the institutional and political processes that govern them. The articles in this issue explore a range of different landscapes and ecologies of politics and health care, bringing the questions and problems of health and illness into the analysis of geopolitics and political economy.

Contents:

The Evolution of Conflict Medicine in the Middle East – An Interview with Ghassan Abu Sittah
Ghassan Abu Sittah, Omar Dewachi, Nabil Al-Tikriti
The Long Shadow of Iraq’s Cancer Epidemic and COVID-19 Mac Skelton
Syrian Refugees Navigate Turkey’s Shifting Health Care Terrain Nihal Kayali
Hepatitis C, COVID-19 and the Egyptian Regime’s Approach to Health Care Jennifer Derr
The Dilemmas of Practicing Humanitarian Medicine in Gaza Osama Tanous
Illness as Metaphor and Reality in Syria Noura Chalati
COVID-19 Exposes Weaknesses in Syria’s Fragmented and War-Torn Health System Aula Abbara