The infamous Delhi gang rape led to an outpouring of public outrage across the country. It signalled a tipping point in people’s angst with the growing pervasiveness of such incidents. Shaken by the brutality of the act, people took to the streets to question the state of affairs of women’s safety in India. With relative […]
Category: Global health
Scott Fraser: Do doctors have a responsibility to lead on climate change?
When learning biology for my school exams (longer ago than I imagine but not so many years ago) I clearly remember that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was rounded down to 0.03%. If I gave that answer today it would be marked as incorrect. According to the US government’s Mauna Loa laboratory, atmospheric CO2 has now […]
Anita Jain on the need for women’s rights movements to carve out their own space
Last month, women’s rights activists in Mumbai took up a protest along the lines of the “Occupy Men’s Toilets” campaign in China, and demanded more public toilets for women. Last year it was headline news that India has more temples than toilets, so the need is clearly not a new one. In addition to diseases […]
Magdalena Kincaid: Basic surgical skills on the Mount of Olives—Part 2
The third Basic Surgical Skills Course for Palestinian trainees at Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) in East Jerusalem concluded on a hot afternoon last week. The major achievement this year was the involvement of senior Palestinian surgeons from West Bank, East Jerusalem, as well as Gaza, in delivering some of the teaching sessions. All the teaching […]
Richard Smith: Dragging global health from the 19th to the 21st century
Last week the World Health Assembly adopted some tough targets for NCD, including reducing deaths among those under 70 by 25% by 2025. The rhetoric is that a “whole of government, whole of society” approach will be needed, but in fact the agenda is dominated by health bodies. The Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network is […]
Krishna Chinthapalli on Atul Gawande—thinker, leader, doctor, writer
In 2009, Obama convened senior politicians in the Oval Office to discuss one magazine article: why were there Medicare costs of $15,000 per person per year in the Texan town of McAllen, when a neighbouring town had costs of $7,500 per person per year? Especially when the hospitals in McAllen were performing worse than its […]
Anant Bhan and Bhavna Dhingra: We need a comprehensive approach to women’s health in India
It has been a winter of discontent regarding the status of women in India, sparked by national outrage following the gruesome gang rape of a young trainee physiotherapist in Delhi. The spontaneous public protests have highlighted the need for reform to promote a gender-equitable society. Today, as we observe International Women’s Day, we also need […]
Bridget Ugorji on how PATHS skills training is helping to save lives
Bridget Ugorji is a midwife at Hadejia General Hospital in Jigawa Northern Nigeria. On International Women’s Day, she shares her experiences of how the life saving skills training she received from Partnership for Transforming Health Systems is helping save the lives of women and newborns. I am privileged to see a life join this earth […]
Amir Attaran on tackling counterfeit medicines
Vienna—Efforts to rid the world of dangerous medicines have been given a boost by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime. Delegates of UN member states, police, manufacturers, academics, and pressure groups gathered recently at UNODC headquarters in Vienna to discuss the present and future criminalisation of “fraudulent” medicines, which increasingly threaten the international […]
Daniel O’Brien: Buruli ulcer in a brave new world
My recent visit to the Buruli ulcer ward run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Akonolinga Hospital, Cameroon, was both inspiring and disturbing. The care provided was state of the art, but the visit led me to imagine an ideal world in which we could close these wards and change the face of this disease dramatically. […]