It is not often that an issue about how the European Commission is organised in relation to a specific part of its work on health comes to the top of the political agenda. Yet that is exactly what has happened in the past month. On 10 September, the president elect of the European Commission, Jean-Claude […]
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Sally Norton: Weight loss—help us to help ourselves
If I hear one more time that keeping your weight down is all about personal responsibility—”just eat less and exercise more”—I will take a double chocolate, banana, and salted caramel, extra large, two for the price of one muffin and ram it into the mouth from whence this smug platitude came. Of course weight control […]
Richard Graham: Is technology changing the brain—how to interpret and advise on the evidence
The recent release of a study by the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, University of Sussex, which said that it had found changes in the structure of the brain caused by technology media multi-tasking, coincided with a panel discussion about just that at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. […]
Wilm Quentin: NCDs and the private sector—part of the problem or part of the solution?
One of the last sessions of the European Health Forum Gastein aimed to find answers to the question of how to engage the private sector in the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Gauden Galea, director of the Division of NCDs and Life-Course at the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe, and organiser […]
Kate Adlington: Should the UK move towards greater regulation of doctor-industry relations?
International interest in the interaction between physicians and industry has been mounting since the Physician Payment Sunshine Act (PPSA) was passed in the United States in 2012. The first data made available as a consequence of this act were published last week by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The BMJ published their […]
Carolyn Thomas: My experience of patient peer review
I’ve finally hit the “Submit” button on my patient review of a research paper submitted to The BMJ—and in time for its deadline. Hurray! This is the first project of this type I’ve ever been involved in, and at first blush I wondered if I would have anything at all meaningful to contribute—as a non-scientist who […]
Ahmed Rashid: Junk food history taking
“Listen to the patient and they will tell you the diagnosis.” Widely attributed to Sir William Osler, this quote is often shared with new medical students, and I often find myself repeating it to the undergraduate clinical students I currently supervise. Regardless of the specialty area or examination skills we cover, clinical history taking remains […]
Aser García Rada: Abortion in Spain
This year´s Global Day of Action for Access to Safe and Legal Abortion, celebrated on 28 September, was especially welcomed in Spain. Earlier that week, Spain’s prime minister and leader of the conservative People´s Party (PP), Mariano Rajoy, announced the withdrawal of his plans to toughen up current abortion law. That law, which was passed by […]
Mihail Călin: Romanian healthcare workers keep packing
An oncologist from Tulcea, a city 280 kilometres east of Romanian capital Bucharest, returned to work one week into his retirement because there was no other specialist to care for his 4000 patients. In Maramureș, a Romanian county on the northern border with Ukraine, an anaesthesiologist has to commute between two towns so that emergency […]
Richard Smith: Improving health through the community in Tunisia
Tunisia, like all low and middle income countries, is having to respond to non-communicable disease after making good progress in reducing infectious disease and improving child and maternal health. Premature deaths from cardiovascular disease increased there by 35% between 1990 and 2010; they increased by 112% in Egypt and by 61% in Saudi Arabia—but fell by […]