The Red Channel Agreement: Standards, quality assurance and coordination. A guidance document regarding the collaboration between International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Medical Emergency Response Units and the World Health Organization Emergency Medical Team Initiative. The World Health Organization and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) renews its agreement to better meet healthcare needs of populations in times of emergencies. This Memorandum of Understanding , also known as the Red Channel Agreement , is the culmination of years of collaboration between IFRC and the WHO Emergency Medical Team Initiative . Originally signed in December 2020, the agreement set out a collaborative framework to achieve better care in emergencies through heightened coordination in emergency systems and in emergency response. In the last three years, significant strides have been made through this agreement which served as a framework to bridge t...

A life of adventure and service. Born in 1919, Dr Barns graduated from Oxford University, England as a medical doctor in 1944. He was immediately drafted into the British Army during the second World War. He married while waiting for his posting, but three days into the honeymoon, he received his embarkation orders. He was stationed in India where he served as an anesthetist in a frontline mobile surgical unit. He returned to Oxford three years later to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, gaining experience while researching his PhD in pelvic tuberculosis, which won him the Blair Bell Memorial Lecture at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London. In 1952 he was appointed as State obstetrician and gynecologist for Johore, Malaysia, and as a personal physician to the Sultan. There, he developed the Flying Squad Service to deliver emergency obstetrics services to remote locations regardless of communist insurgency. Dr Barns' life was not without risks. Durin...