When I teach young doctors in Amsterdam about responding to NCD (non-communicable disease) in low and middle income countries, I ask them how they would allocate 100 units of resource. I give them four buckets. One bucket is for treating people with established disease: patients with heart attacks, strokes, cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. […]
“What has International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) achieved anyway?” The question posed at a workshop on primary prevention needed answering, since the 21st IPPNW Congress meeting we were at coincided with major wars in Gaza, Syria, and Ukraine. Not even the most ardent members of IPPNW would expect our organisation to prevent […]
Lately, social media sites have been invaded by videos of people upending buckets of icy water over their heads. The goal behind this watery exercise is to raise funds, as well as awareness, for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research. The ALS ice bucket challenge is simple: douse yourself in icy water, record it, post it online—on […]
Since the Ebola outbreak was confirmed back in March 2014, I, like many doctors, have been following its progress with a great deal of interest and sadness over the increasing number of deaths, which have included several healthcare workers. In relation to the current outbreak, there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in the […]
In Spain we are beginning to attend to a growing number of suspected cases of chikungunya—a disease most of us have never faced before—among patients coming from the Caribbean region. Chikungunya (a Makonde word for “that which bends up”) is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes Aegypti and Aedes Albopictus (tiger mosquito) variety. […]
Sarah Woznick is a specialist intensive care nurse working with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF/ Doctors Without Borders). She arrived in Gaza six months ago from Denver, Colorado. She was due to leave the mission the day after operation “Protective Edge” began, but decided to stay on to help provide medical care. Image: Sarah in the […]
One Friday afternoon in May, I sat in my local library in London, surrounded by young men and women, who looked mostly like students studying for examinations. As they buried their heads in their books or scanned their laptop screens, I furiously tapped at the screen on my phone, causing a few heads to look […]
A year ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued revised and consolidated guidelines on the use of antiretroviral drugs for treating and preventing HIV infection. These guidelines included a key recommendation to initiate HIV treatment earlier (at 500 CD4 cells/mm³ or less) in order to ensure that people with HIV live longer, healthier lives, and […]
Chatting to fellow parents about summer holiday plans at a recent school event, I was asked by a mother whether I was worried about radiation levels in Japan. Both her family and mine are travelling to Japan this summer, although neither party are travelling anywhere near Fukushima. I told her that I was actually looking […]
Last month we saw the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones take place in London. Co-chaired by foreign secretary William Hague and actress Angelina Jolie, the summit achieved a momentous success in establishing an International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict. What’s still being written, however, is […]