The adrenaline rush was unbearable. I could feel my palms sweating. When I tried to clip the microphone on to my coat, my hands were trembling. Eager looking eyes of the audience were pinned on me. I took a deep breath and with my heart still pounding, I said, “Hello everyone!” […]
Category: Siddhartha Yadav
Siddhartha Yadav on the challenges in reducing maternal mortality in Nepal
Wednesday was an unusual day for the prime minister of Nepal. Right when he was about to leave for the capital from Nepalgunj in his helicopter, he received a call from one his acquaintances pleading to air-rescue a pregnant woman with placental haemorrhage from Rukum, a remote hilly district of Nepal. And so a rescue […]
Siddhartha Yadav on optimism in South Asia for health research
Last week was a research-filled week for me. Two biomedical papers to review in the early part of the week and the South Asian Forum for Health Research (SAFHeR) meeting towards the end. Could not ask for more. […]
Siddharta Yadav on changing perceptions of HIV/AIDS
There is a famous proverb in Nepali which says we learn something either by reading about it or by facing it. I prefer the latter because of the everlasting impression that “facing something” leaves, in contrast to the hazy-sketchy memories of reading. I have been reading about HIV and AIDS since my first year in […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Sex and the city
Thamel is a busy tourist hub in Kathmandu. Its streets are lined by numerous shops, massage centres, bars, pubs, hotels, restaurants and even strip clubs, popularly known as dance restaurants. Life in Thamel begins with nightfall. This nightlife used to continue throughout the night. But not any more. A new directive by the home ministry […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Sue me, please
I have just read a BMJ news story about doctors being beaten up in Nepal for the death of a patient. While this may seem to be quite shocking for the western society, it is an everyday reality for us, medicos, living and practising in Nepal. Over the past five years such incidents have been […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Doctors’ involvement in torture
My attention was drawn to a story in yesterday’s Guardian newspaper about alleged abuse of eleven Iraqis by British soldiers, coming less than a month after the BMJ covered a press conference organised by Physicians for Human Rights, which I attended. […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Is it time for a global health service?
“I want to live”, read the caption to the life-size photograph of a young man attached to the dialysis machine. I had seen this photograph at a hospital gate in Nepal almost everyday for three months before I came to London two weeks ago, and it is likely that it is still there. Surprisingly, he […]