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LONDON, England — A recent analysis in the Lancet medical journal highlights dire conditions from Sudan to Gaza, with civilians in urgent need and hospitals frequently targeted in attacks, while humanitarian efforts struggle to meet the demands.
“The current humanitarian aid model is inadequate for the scale and nature of today’s emergencies,” stated Dr. Paul Spiegel, a co-author of the report, in an interview with Fox News.
AS GLOBAL ATTENTION SHIFTS, SUDAN EXPERIENCES MASS DISPLACEMENT WITH 12 MILLION FORCED TO FLEE IN A DEVASTATING CONFLICT
Images from March 20, 2025, depict patients receiving care at the Saudi hospital in Omdurman, Sudan, amidst ongoing turmoil that has severely impacted healthcare facilities and educational institutions throughout the city and its environs. (Ebrahim Hamid/AFP)
Dr. Spiegel, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-director of its Center for Humanitarian Health, brings decades of on-ground experience in refugee camps and conflict zones globally. “I’ve been involved in this field for over 30 years,” he remarked. “We are facing some of the darkest times I’ve ever witnessed.”
Highlighting one of the world’s largest disasters, Sudan’s brutal civil war — where tens of millions of people are in need as hospitals close and famine spreads — the panel of experts behind the report says the world knows how to save lives, but that the system is failing to deliver. The experts’ report, titled ‘Health in a World of Crises and Impunity,’ argues that some agencies are too bureaucratic, and others too slow. The whole system, they say, needs revamping.
Dr. Paul Spiegel, is a professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-chair of its Center for Humanitarian Health. (Paul Spiegel)
The report argues the United Nations is in need of reform, while in the U.S. it highlights the Trump Administration’s shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) over suspected fraud and abuse.
During that restructuring, many of USAID’s most vital programs were folded into the State Department, but the report calls USAID’s closure a “shock” and “sudden,” and part of a chain of decisions in the U.S. and elsewhere which it condemns as “a political and moral failure.”
ANALYSTS SAY GAZA ‘CIVILIAN’ DEATHS INCLUDE HAMAS, OTHER TERROR MEMBERS WORKING AS MEDICS, MEDIA WORKERS
A truck loaded with humanitarian aid for the Gaza Strip travels to the Kerem Shalom crossing at the Israel-Gaza border on May 20, 2025. (Maya Alleruzzo/AP)
“USAID needed to be restructured,” Spiegel told Fox News. “The U.N. needs to be restructured in a very significant way. But it’s how you do that.
“It is the strategy to make sure that you do it in such a way that vulnerable populations across the globe are not going to be hurt, and that it wasn’t done like that.”
Dr. Paul Spiegel has decades of experience working in refugee camps and war zones around the world. (Paul Spiegel)
The authors are pushing for major global reforms, including overhauling funding, sending aid directly to local communities, greater accountability if governments or armed groups block aid, and upholding healthcare as a basic human right.
“It’s really a complete rebalancing,” Spiegel said, “to make sure that the system actually works for the people it’s intended to help.”