The year was 1992 and the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital had landed at Chiang Mai International Airport in the north of Thailand. Its mission: to provide training and mentorship to ophthalmologists and eye care professionals in my country. At the time I was a young doctor and a third year resident in ophthalmology at the […]
Category: Global health
Colin D Butler: Regional overload and the consequences it has for health
Almost 1% of the world population, mostly children, is forcibly displaced (including 11.7 million Syrians), an increase of over 50% from 2011. [1] Here I propose that the public health catastrophe in Syria be conceptualized as a canary case of “regional overload,” relevant to the emerging public health sub-specialty of planetary health. [2,3,4] […]
What can we learn from the European Union’s first right to food law?
By Tomaso Ferrando and Roberto Sensi. In this second article on the #RightToFood, part of a BMJ Global Health series, we discuss our experience of the conception and enactment of a right to food law in Lombardia, Italy. The “Recognition, Protection and Promotion of the Right to Food,” was approved by the Lombardia Regional Council in November 2015. […]
Seth Berkley: The new priority in Syria is preventing epidemics
Regardless of how the current ceasefire agreement in Syria came about, it has—to a large extent—brought a welcome halt to hostilities in many parts of the country. But as one humanitarian crisis is suspended, another potentially hangs in the balance—the growing threat of epidemics. With no way of knowing how long the ceasefire will last, […]
BMJ Christmas charity appeal: Orbis’s Flying Eye Hospital—going places where other charities often can’t
I think if I wasn’t an anaesthetist, I would have liked to have been a pilot. There are a lot of similarities between the two: in terms of responsibility, and that it’s a practical, science based role. My job and my interest in aviation combine perfectly through the charity I volunteer for, Orbis, which fights […]
Richard Smith: The brutality of demography
Many of us elite liberals like to think of ourselves as rational creatures trying to get by in a crazy world, but we know that we are prey to all sorts of cognitive and emotional malfunctions. What we don’t perhaps recognise so well is the power that demography exerts on us, just as it does […]
Jose Luis Vivero-Pol and Tomaso Ferrando: Let’s talk about the right to food
Legal recognition of the right to food and nutrition can create the grounds for effective and systemic solutions for hunger and malnutrition. Recently, the media was abuzz with news of plans by the Scottish Equalities Secretary to legislate the right to food within Scottish law. This would be a step towards tackling food poverty in […]
Chris Simms: The Global Risk Report 2016—who listened?
What has the global community learnt from the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Risk Report released last January? The evidence suggests it has not learnt enough to prioritize and take effective steps to mediate risk and, instead, over the past 12 months we have seemed transfixed and bewildered by an onslaught of world events. As […]
Adesoji Ademuyiwa: Improving child survival following emergency surgery
As a paediatric surgeon in Nigeria, my experience is that child survival following emergency surgery is lower compared to children in more developed countries. This is especially the case in the neonatal period. Studies in countries with a low to middle Human Development Index (HDI) have documented several challenges associated with this issue—delays in presentation […]
Nitika Pant Pai: HIV self-testing can help end the AIDS epidemic
Although much progress has been made in tackling HIV, in 2015 there were over 36 million people living with HIV, and over 2 million people become newly infected with HIV each year. But the ambition to end HIV is strong. Two years ago UNAIDS announced its 90-90-90 initiative. By 2020, 90% of all people living with […]