British medical personnel can volunteer to help with the Government's humanitarian emergency response to disasters overseas, under a new arrangement a...

This focus on the very young is perhaps a natural reflex, yet we mustn't allow it to blind us to the needs of older people. As a doctor myself, and currently president of an international medical humanitarian organisation operating in emergencies around the world, I want to challenge our sense that we should always focus first on the needs of the very young in emergencies.

The extraordinary levels of energy that we need to do our work is the stuff of youth. And even at 40, we still have enough of the conceited, angry teenager to protest the senselessness of a rich world where so many people suffer and die for lack of medical care.