The piece that follows is my foreword to a new and fascinating book by Peter Gøtzsche, the head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, entitled Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare. I hope that this piece might prompt you to read the book. I was not paid for my foreword and […]
Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth. That was the chilling message delivered by the smiling, brilliant, erudite, and cuddly John Ioannidis at the Seventh Peer Review Congress in Chicago this week. Listening to somebody as brilliant as Ioannidis is like listening […]
Being treated by a qualified doctor is something of a rarity for rural Indians. The country faces an overall scarcity of health workers (doctors, nurses, and midwives) with approximately 20 health workers per 10,000 people in India. The numbers are already below the World Health Organization’s benchmark figure of 25 health workers per 10,000 people. […]
Welcome to a series of blogs on sustainable healthcare that will look at health, sustainability, and the interplay between the two. The blog will share ideas from experts across the healthcare field, some of whom are speaking at a major European conference looking at Pathways to Sustainable Healthcare in September 2013. More about the Cleanmed […]
It is now some 15 years since the emergence of the idea and supporting evidence that combining antihypertensives and a statin into a single polypill and giving it to people daily could dramatically reduce morbidity and premature mortality from heart disease and stroke. Yet polypills are still not licensed in any high income country, although […]
On 15 September 2013, thousands of doctors and doctors-to-be will flock to the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) website to apply for a residency position in the United States. As this date is approaching, I can see both excitement and apprehension on the faces of prospective candidates. Most of the candidates that I know are […]
The second Bottle Neck Analysis (BNA) workshop for maternal and newborn health interventions was held in Hyderabad on 6 and 7 of August 2013. It was conducted by the National Rural Health Mission, Andhra Pradesh, and supported by the Department of Health, Medical, and Family Welfare (government of Andhra Pradesh), and the UNICEF field office […]
What do snakebites, tetanus, and rabies have in common? Answer: Treating patients with these life threatening conditions relies on antisera, a class of immunoglobulin-rich products derived from the plasma of human volunteers or animals and used for passive immunization after suspected exposure (to tetanus or rabies), or for antivenom activity following snakebites. Each year about […]
“Raise your hand if:” —“You are an editor of a medical journal?” A sea of hands shot up in the air. —“The ‘Instructions to Authors’ of your journal indicates the reporting guidelines/ checklists to be complied with?” Less than half stay put. — “You do not accept a paper unless the checklist appropriate to the study […]
Antibiotic resistance has become one of the biggest public health epidemics of our time. While national data on hospital acquired infections is still elusive, the Indian government admits that 80% of antibiotics are used in the community, and that 20-50% of all antibiotic use is inappropriate. For some chronic diseases like tuberculosis, the problem of […]