Primary care covers the whole population, but it’s underfunded and has increasing difficulty recruiting doctors; and there are worries about equity and the quality of care. This could be the NHS in Britain, but it’s the health system in Florianópolis, Brazil. The NHS can learn from the Brazilian experience, and Jorge Zepeda, a family physician […]
There has been an alarming increase in the number of reported deaths due to brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, a parasite that invades the brain through the nose via water. [1] The parasite feeds on the brain and causes severe haemorrhage and inflammation resulting in widespread brain tissue destruction. Even with treatments, the fatality rate is […]
A global health peril that demands global action. For only the fourth time in history, a health issue has reached the great political heights of the United Nations General Assembly. Following HIV, non-communicable diseases, and Ebola—antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has taken the grand stage, receiving a standing ovation in the form of a united political declaration which […]
In my first medical mission to Aleppo in October 2013, I was asked to examine a toddler who had arrived at our hospital after being shot in the head by a sniper one hour earlier. He was just 3 years old. His heart was beating, but he exhibited no other signs of life. I was […]
The BMJ Global Health blog Mental health is neglected and stigmatized globally and across societies, in spite of its high burden. Moreover, in Nigeria, mental health is not just neglected but remains completely absent from key health sector documents. There is a glimmer of hope though, in the form of a revised mental health policy from 2013, […]
The BMJ Global Health blog The connectivity made possible by social media is one of the most important revolutionary changes in the last decade. And The BMJ has always encouraged openness, transparency, and multi-stakeholder involvement, through blogs and other social media. The BMJ now has an extensive blog portfolio. At BMJ Global Health, we have […]
In September 2015, 194 member states of the United Nations agreed to adopt the resolution A/RES/70/1 from Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. By accepting this resolution they have set themselves 17 social, economic, educational, and health goals to achieve by 2030. Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) declares that the state will […]
Responding to an outbreak of yellow fever is not as exotic as you may imagine. What kind of exciting and interesting things do you do as an emergency response nurse with Save the Children’s emergency health unit in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) the day before one of the largest ever vaccination campaigns in […]
Without diagnostic tests, medicine is blind. And yet, diagnostics receive much less attention than vaccines and drugs. Imagine a sick infant with bacterial sepsis in sub-Saharan Africa. Without diagnostics, they will likely get incorrectly treated for malaria. Every year, one million patients with TB in India are either not diagnosed or not reported. Pregnant women […]
While sugar sweetened beverages (SSBs) are increasingly being targeted by governments in their efforts to halt and reverse rising levels of obesity, energy drinks in particular have been singled out as a soft drink category that might constitute a double whammy for health. First of all, they contain high levels of both sugar and caffeine, […]