I attended a remarkable reception with a focus on health and migration at the UK embassy in Vienna last week. The ambassador Susan le Jeune d’Allegeershecque shared her personal experiences of when the wave of refugees reached the eastern Austrian border in 2015. She had seen completely exhausted and traumatised children and a pregnant woman whose waters […]
Category: Georg Röggla
Georg Röggla: Choosing wisely in Germany
I attended the annual convention of the German Society of Internal Medicine DGIM (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Innere Medizin) in Mannheim this week. The main focus of this congress is transferring knowledge from bench to bedside and a large proportion of participants are primarily clinicians. I was interested to see that a BMJ topic was one […]
The BMJ Today: The diesel scandal and breast cancer
• Paul Wilkinson and Andy Haines call for consequences to the Volkswagen diesel scandal in an editorial. Perhaps the lesson from the Volkswagen episode is not just whether manufacturers will comply with the legislation aimed at cleaning an inherently polluting fuel source. It may be time for society to commit to a decisive break with fossil fuel […]
Georg Röggla: Refugees and civil society
The migration crisis has reached Central Europe. About 10 000 migrants arrived in Vienna within a few hours on Saturday, most of them on their way to Germany. The situation is dramatic: Four children, including a baby girl, were among 71 migrants found suffocated in a truck on a highway just outside Vienna last week. […]
The BMJ Today: Chillies and mortality, informed consent, and healthcare for Syrian refugees
• Is chilli good for your health? Jun Lv and colleagues report a large cohort study assessing the associations between the regular consumption of spicy foods and total and cause specific mortality. They found that the habitual consumption of spicy foods was inversely associated with total and certain cause specific mortality (cancer, ischemic heart diseases, and […]
Georg Röggla: The political culture on refugees has tilted
David Berger and Kamran Abbasi wrote an important editorial about refugees, saying that it is time for moral leadership from Western democracies. I cross the border between Italy and Austria by train every weekend. Italian, German, and Austrian police catch at least ten, and sometimes many more, migrants heading northwards out of each train. I […]
The BMJ Today: Readmission rates and a second look at torture
Readmission rates to hospitals are often used as markers for quality of care, although a consistent link between readmissions and quality has not been established. Leora I Horwitz and colleagues conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study from 4651 US acute care hospitals. They found that standardised readmission rates are lowest in the lowest volume hospitals. This is highly […]
The BMJ Today: Evacuation of children in World War II
The evacuation of civilians has been performed in many countries in times of war. The evacuation of civilians in Britain immediately after the outbreak of the Second World War was designed to save children from the risks associated with aerial bombing of cities by moving them to areas thought to be less at risk. Operation Pied […]
The BMJ Today: Mediterranean diets and infant mortality
The Nurses ’Health Studies are long term epidemiological studies conducted on women’s health. They are among the largest investigations into risk factors for major chronic diseases in women ever conducted. Marta Crous-Bou and co-workers have published a new and interesting finding from it. Greater adherence to Mediterranean diet was significantly associated with longer leukocyte telomere length, […]
The BMJ Today: Management of COPD
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is one of the most common diseases a GP has to manage in their daily routine. The BMJ has recently set a focus on COPD management. Shawn D Aaron draws attention to the fact that patients with COPD are prone to acute respiratory exacerbations, with a possible detrimental effect on […]