Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
Department of Emergency Medicine, Loma Linda University Medical Center, Loma Linda, CA, USA.
Glob Health Action. 2022 Dec 31;15(1):2107203. doi: 10.1080/16549716.2022.2107203.
The Tigray crisis in Ethiopia is a grave humanitarian catastrophe with causes and consequences that resemble the Nigerian Civil War that ended with the defeat of secessionist Biafra five decades ago. As in the Biafra example, an ethnically distinct and embattled enclave is surrounded by hostile forces and cut off from commerce of any kind, producing starvation, forced migrant encampments, and pervasive dependence on externally provided food relief. Relief action strategies developed during the Nigerian Civil War were comprised of operational components that were often insufficiently integrated into a unified system for nutritional screening, referral, acute care, nutritional rehabilitation, and team deployment. This lack of strategic integration for post-conflict relief actions merits review for possible lessons that could avert its recurrence in Tigray. If evidence-based systems for relief organization had been comprehensively applied in Biafra, the pace of post-conflict nutritional recovery could have been accelerated. Although component strategies of the Biafra-Nigeria Relief Action are being replicated by various agencies that are providing humanitarian assistance in Tigray, their collective impact could be enhanced if these strategies were integrated into a unified, evidence-driven systems response to the emergency. The elements of such a systems approach for assisting Tigray are reviewed.
埃塞俄比亚提格雷危机是一场严重的人道主义灾难，其起因和后果类似于 50 年前结束的尼日利亚内战，当时分离主义的比亚法拉战败。与比亚法拉的情况一样，一个种族独特、四面楚歌的飞地被敌对势力包围，与任何形式的商业往来都被切断，导致饥饿、被迫移民营地和普遍依赖外部提供的粮食救济。在尼日利亚内战期间制定的救济行动战略包括行动组成部分，但这些组成部分往往没有充分整合到一个统一的营养筛查、转介、急性护理、营养康复和团队部署系统中。这种冲突后救济行动战略缺乏整合，值得审查，以吸取可能避免其在提格雷再次发生的教训。如果在比亚法拉全面应用基于证据的救济组织系统，冲突后营养恢复的速度可能会加快。尽管在提格雷提供人道主义援助的各个机构正在复制比亚法拉-尼日利亚救济行动的各个战略，但如果将这些战略整合到一个统一的、基于证据的紧急情况应对系统中，它们的集体影响可能会增强。本文回顾了协助提格雷的这种系统方法的要素。
