In 2009 snakebite was added to the list of neglected diseases by the World Health Organization (WHO)—the first official recognition of it as a health problem. But the true burden of the disease, particularly in India, came to light only in 2011 when the Million Death Study reported that there were about 46 000 deaths each […]
Category: South Asia
Vaibhav Bagaria: Of God’s “own men”
Recently, the medical fraternity of India has been in the spotlight on various accounts. While the highest court of the country proclaimed that medical professionals were “agents of god,” and that they should not engage in striking; another high court in the country informed and “ruled” that “all of us have suffered at the hands of doctors.” […]
Ben Gibbison: “Well, it’s the NHS . . . what do you expect?”
A few years ago, I was climbing in the Indian Himalaya. After driving to the road head, we walked for four days to our base camp. There, one of our group suffered with high altitude cerebral oedema. We carried her back down the valley for 12 hours until we reached the road head and found a […]
Yogesh Jain and Raman Kataria: The pathology of a public health tragedy
Lessons from the Bilaspur sterilization camp The recent deaths of 13 women in India operated on at a sterilization camp in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, has thrown up urgent questions on the delivery of these services. As doctors observing health systems for the poor from close quarters in Bilaspur for the last fifteen years, we are convinced this was […]
Joseph Borick: A Jogini’s story
Our story begins on a warm humid day in a rural village in Andhra Pradesh, India. Our team of six doctors, nurses, and medical students arrived with a mobile health bus to run a community clinic. As the patients rolled in and out of the clinic at a remarkably quick pace, I remember one patient* that […]
The BMJ Today: Climate change and conflicts of interest: the sound and the fury
“Fury as top medical journal joins the green bandwagon” fumed the Daily Mail last week, which took exception to The BMJ’s publication of an article that, in the words of editor in chief Fiona Godlee, was not medicine or health but “pure climate science.” “In this unequal battle with big business and political inertia we have […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—6 October 2014
NEJM 2 October 2014 Vol 371 1285 Here is a trial which had me taking my glasses off and scratching my bald patch. Why on earth should a drug company—in this case Boehringer Ingelheim— want to pay for a trial of taking patients OFF a drug? And why in particular should it want to take people […]
The BMJ Today: More on climate change
Earlier this year, The BMJ’s editor in chief, Fiona Godlee, was one of 50 senior UK medical professionals to sign a letter in the Times newspaper about the health benefits of ending investment in fossil fuels, and diverting funds instead to alternative energy and more active forms of transport. On 1 October 2014, The BMJ […]
The BMJ Today: Conflicting interests
As politicians enjoy a glass or two of the hard stuff during this week’s Conservative Party conference, they may like to find time to read a BMJ research paper on the impact of minimum alcohol pricing, and reflect on government policy in this area. Prime minister David Cameron has reneged on promises to impose minimum […]
Gavin Yamey et al: Our hunches on how to tackle humanitarian disasters can cause harm
It seemed, on the face of it, to make a lot of sense. It seemed intuitively the right thing to do. When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck on 26 December 2004, psychologists flew in to encourage survivors to openly discuss their feelings in detail—a process known as “debriefing”—as a way of warding off post-traumatic stress […]