Omar Dewachi - Death of the Clinic

Omar Dewachi traces the transformations of medicine across three decades of war, sanctions, occupation, and displacement in Iraq and the wider Middle East. Beginning in Baghdad's Medical City during the sanctions of the 1990s, this talk follows wounds as they move through hospitals, military evacuation systems, laboratories, households, and across regional borders in search of care.

Drawing on his experiences as a physician in Iraq and later anthropological research with Iraqi patients and clinicians across the region, Dewachi examines how the erosion of medical infrastructures reshapes not only where and how care takes place, but also the (micro)biological course of injury. The emergence of multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii during the Iraq War provides one window onto what he calls "war biology": the entanglement of violence, therapeutic intervention, microbial adaptation, and survival over time.

This talk asks what becomes of medicine when the clinic can no longer guarantee the continuity of care. Dewachi is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University. Registration required.