Emma Bell, Susan Bewley, Silvia Petretti, Lynda Shentall, and Alice Welbourn. Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) [1], increases the vulnerability of women and girls to acquiring HIV. Research from Asia, Africa, Latin America, and now the UK shows that gender based violence, of which IPV is one part, is also experienced by women with HIV—often precipitated […]
Category: Guest writers
Marcus Munafò and Björn Brembs: The impact factor agenda
Where do we find the latest, high quality research to inform our own research or clinical practice? Although new media have introduced a range of alternatives, such as the National Elf Service, the primary vehicle for disseminating research continues to be the learned journal. And the primary means of rating the […]
Richard Vize: Can the recommendations of the Francis Inquiry be implemented?
The recommendations of the Francis Inquiry cannot simply be implemented. It is a complicated set of proposals that will create new difficulties and challenges for the medical profession. Doctors need to lead the debate on what happens next. Robert Francis’s lawyerly circumlocution, filling almost 1,800 pages, guarantees that virtually nobody will read the whole report. […]
Nicola While on EU tobacco legislation and the EWTD
While the UK starts an introspective process of re-examing its relationship with the EU, and gears up for a referendum which may result in a complete withdrawal from the supranational body, in Brussels progress continues to be made on policies that promote and progress public health. Despite fears that the proposal for a revision of […]
Vasiliy Vlassov: The destruction of medical education in Russia
While the words “healthcare reform” are forbidden in Russia, healthcare is changing quickly. Over the past three years, three federal laws have been rewritten: the basic healthcare law, a law on drugs, and a law on compulsory insurance. 2012 ended with a federal law on education coming in to force. This is a shot in […]
Suchita Shah: Health as a gateway to global development
A week ago, I was writing about rights—in this particular instance, the right to safe water, having personally experienced the city of Santiago without water during my stay in Chile. It seemed to me, as the city waited for water companies, and not hospitals, to oblige, that many solutions to fundamental public health problems lie […]
Richard Vize: Andy Burnham’s plans signify profound changes in the way the NHS is structured
With little media attention, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has proposed scrapping clinical commissioning as part of a new round of NHS upheaval if Labour is returned to office. In a speech at the King’s Fund recently, Burnham tried to portray his ideas as a mere reshuffling of the structures that will be in place […]
Sophie Petit-Zeman on UK DUETs: uncertainties as opportunities
“Our failure to confront uncertainty about the effects of treatment has resulted in the suffering and death of patients, sometimes on a massive scale.” This chilling statement comes from Iain Chalmers’ 2008 BMJ editorial, Confronting therapeutic ignorance, that heralded the start of the BMJ‘s Uncertainties page. In the same article, Chalmers referred to a then […]
Jeremy Sare: The cannabis reclassification saga began shortly after 9/11
Although it may seem initially bathetic to put these events together, David Blunkett’s appearance before the Home Affairs Select Committee in October 2001 actually set in motion a dozen years of bickering between science and politics. Blunkett’s defining reason for reclassification of cannabis (not to incriminate young people) was eventually defied and overturned. Figures published […]
Jonny Martell: An anthropological view of care of elderly people
When viewed through the perspective offered by an anthropological lens, “care of elderly people” is an extraordinary phenomenon in Western culture. Reading the masterful survey of what we might learn (and reject) from extant or recently extinct traditional societies in Jared Diamond’s “The World until Yesterday,” I was struck by the way in which the […]