War Hospital: A True Story of Surgery and Survival

Sheri Fink documents the survival of a small medical team during the three-year siege of Srebrenica in the Bosnian War. The narrative tracks several doctors and nurses who operated under constant shelling with minimal supplies, often lacking anesthesia, electricity, and basic antibiotics. Fink details how these clinicians improvised surgical tools and made lethal triage decisions as the patient population swelled from local residents to thousands of displaced refugees. The text examines the professional isolation and psychological strain faced by the staff when international aid agencies failed to reach the enclave before its eventual fall.

Biomedical ethicists and historians of humanitarian medicine read this account to understand clinical practice in extreme scarcity. The book provides a case study on medical neutrality and the ethical dilemmas of prioritizing care when resources are insufficient for the entire population. Readers gain a technical perspective on wartime trauma surgery and the logistical obstacles of maintaining a functioning hospital within a blockaded territory. It offers a factual record of how medical professionals operate when the legal and physical protections of their field collapse during ethnic conflict.