A few weeks ago I attended a conference for GPs on commissioning in the brave new world of GP consortia, proposed in the recent health bill. The day started with a very upbeat GP seeking to enthuse the audience of about 70 participants with a reverberating war cry: “commissioning! who’s up for it?” One hand shot […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: Adding treatment of hypertension to HIV programmes in rural Kenya
The biggest problem with treating hypertension in rural Kenya is lack of drugs. Health workers are plentiful, and there is an impressive health system—but drugs are scarce. I learnt this when I visited the hospital in Eldoret, a small city in the West of Kenya, and a close by community clinic. My colleagues and I […]
Richard Smith: The Great War and NHS reform
The Great War changed the world forever and burnt itself into our language, memory, consciousness, and understanding of life. That’s the argument of Paul Fussell’s marvelous book “The Great War and Modern Memory,” which was first published in 1975 and won the National Book Award. Before the war we had Tennyson, Kipling, Trollope, Conrad, and […]
Richard Smith: Healing from apartheid
South Africa is a country scarred by apartheid, and during my week in Cape Town I had a chance to get a sense in my own small and idiosyncratic way of how far healing has progressed. My first experiences were discouraging. I stayed in the Vineyard Hotel at the foot of Table Mountain. It’s as […]
David Kerr: Gordon Gekko and the NHS
Here in United States, the latest must have app contains software that blocks any mention of the actor, Charlie Sheen. Until recently, Sheen was the highest paid television star in the world but was fired last week after making caustic comments about his employers in public. Subsequently, he has just been awarded the Guinness World […]
Tiago Villanueva: Choose your trainer wisely
When choosing a specialty, many prospective trainees will thoroughly consider the location and the institution. This is self evident. If you can’t fare without the big city perks and comforts, you’re probably better off in London than in the Orkney islands. If living close to your family and friends is extremely important for you, perhaps […]
Richard Smith: Managing hypertension in a South African township
South Africa suffers from a “quadruple burden” of disease—infectious disease, particularly AIDS and TB; trauma from road traffic injuries and violence; perinatal and maternal health problems; and non-communicable disease. I thought of this burden as we visited the community clinic in Khayelitsha, the largest “township” in Cape Town. […]
Muir Gray: Viva Wittgenstein
The single greatest influence on my work has been the inscrutable, often incomprehensible Ludwig Wittgenstein, philosopher and MRC Lab Technician. Much of his writing I find very difficult. The early paragraphs in Philosophical Investigations are a good introduction but even easier, for me, was the great Ray Monk Biography and the fascinating account of the […]
Martin McShane: Phoenix – myth or reality?
I attended, what I think, was the last National Patient Safety Forum last week. I have been a member since it was set up following the publication of Safety First. I was worried that safety was going to get neglected as the National Patient Safety Agency’s abolition was announced in the bonfire of the quangos. […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Measles eradication – lofty goal or major distraction?
Immunization really is the bread and butter work of global public health, so that many of us engaged in global health trace our roots to vaccination campaigns for polio or, for the most venerable, smallpox. My first job was as an international monitor and observer on the measles campaigns in Nepal. I still have projects […]