It had been raining for three days solid before I arrived at Atme refugee camp, in North Syria. I was there with Rola*, a British Syrian doctor and medical co ordinator of UK registered charity, Hand in Hand for Syria, to review the camp’s medical centre. Children wearing sandals came to speak to us. I […]
Category: Guest writers
Farah Kidy on volunteering in India with the Institute of Rural Health Studies
After years of planning and plotting, I was finally getting ready to head off to India. This was going to be a voyage of discovery; I was going to explore my roots, live village life, and hopefully, “do a bit of good.” I arrived at Hyderabad’s shiny new airport—complete with a WH Smith and a […]
Andrew Moscrop: Primary healthcare in Nepal
I am willing it not to snow anymore. It has snowed for the past two days as I walked to the settlement of Simikot. There is an airstrip here, but the flights out of this remote north west corner of Nepal are even more weather dependent than our donkeys have been and I am keen […]
Gethin Morgan on being red green colour blind
It wasn’t until I was a 16 year old sixth former in school that I discovered my problem with colour vision. When I experienced difficulties in practical biology and chemistry my friends guessed what might be wrong. They placed the Ishihara Test for colour blindness in front of me, which had recently been published in […]
Martin McKee: How should the United States respond to gun crime?
A few days ago a disturbed young man in Newtown, Connecticut, shot his mother before going to the primary school where she worked to murder 20 children, aged between six and seven years old, and six staff. The immediate response was disbelief and shock at yet another mass shooting in America. But this was followed, […]
Radhika Arora et al: Challenges and opportunities for female health systems researchers
Juggling personal and professional lives in search of the perfect balance is an art that women and men across the world, in different spheres of work, are familiar with. How does this play out in the life of a female health researcher? At the Health Systems Research Symposium held in Beijing recently, a group of […]
Jeremy Sare on the media’s misrepresentation of drugs
Everyone has an imperfect knowledge of drugs. But where do people find the information on which they base their forthright opinions? An Ipsos poll found the media are the most important source of drug information for 58 percent of the population. Given much of the media’s persistent misrepresentation of the facts that is perhaps why […]
Baroness Hollins: Cost effective vaccines saving millions of lives around the world
Last week a global health event took place in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, to foster greater political will and explore ways to accelerate results, innovation, sustainability, and equity in the field of immunisation. The meeting also highlighted and promoted the goals of the global vaccine access plan, a worldwide strategy for vaccination and immunisation programmes […]
Tara Lamont: How numbers help—from weather to walk-in clinics
Last week I went off to flood-bound Exeter, for a stimulating two day conference led by Martin Pitt at Peninsula Medical School. It was designed to bring together clinicians, managers, and patients, with researchers practising those strange sciences of systems modelling and simulation. These techniques have been under used in health, but there was a […]
Simon Leese: Translating genomics—making science work for health
The PHG Foundation’s “Translating Genomics” conference, at Robinson College, Cambridge, on 4 December 2012, was billed as a celebration of 15 years of public health genomics in the UK and an exploration of the future role of genomics in 21st century healthcare: on the day, the focus was very much on the latter. PHG Foundation […]