As readers of The BMJ, there’s a good chance you are familiar with the burden of disease (BoD) approach. BoD is a systematic scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to disease, injury, and risk factors by age, sex, and geography for specific points in time. It combines measures of morbidity […]
Jonathan Roos: Let’s hear it for the case report
To date, more than 56 million papers have been published in the scientific literature. Astonishingly, printing out just the first page of each would create a stack almost 6km high—much higher than the Mont Blanc—Europe’s highest mountain at 4,809 metres. Or in man-made terms—stacking London’s Canary Wharf tower 20 times on top of itself or […]
Derek Summerfield: My NHS Trust insists on face recognition software to be sure of who I really am
The other day my NHS Trust sent me notification that I was due renewal of my Disclosure and Barring (DBS) clearance (previously called CRB). I was asked to bring my passport. Presenting myself to Medical HR, I was asked to sit in front of a computer with face recognition technology and my passport placed face […]
Christopher Stokes: One year after Kunduz
Battlefields without doctors, in wars without limits Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is remembering one of the darkest moments in its history. On 3 October 2015, US airstrikes killed 42 people and destroyed the MSF trauma hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. As we grieve the loss of our colleagues and patients, we are left with the question: […]
Madhukar Pai and Nimalan Arinaminpathy: How can India overcome tuberculosis?
India reports more cases of tuberculosis than any other country. This much is well known. However, nobody quite knows the true magnitude of the TB problem in the country. For one, we do not know the number of TB patients who do not seek care or who remain undiagnosed, but we refer to this often […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—3 October 2016
NEJM 29 Sep 2016 Vol 375 Creating a Zika vaccine In the 15th century, sailors from Cadiz set sail under a captain from Genoa to find the western route from Europe to China. They landed in a New World, and proceeded to infect it with the rich mix of communicable diseases that Spanish sailors of the […]
Vageesh Jain: Donald Trump—a disaster for global health
As the US presidential election inches closer, Donald Trump appears to be tapping into the American zeitgeist. But what would a Trump presidency mean for the world? Some say nothing will change in the permanently gridlocked US political system. Others fear nuclear war, the re-emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, and shorter maternity leave. And […]
Private gain, public pain: does a booming private healthcare industry in Nepal benefit its people?
Public dissatisfaction with the health sector in Nepal has grown in recent years. A prominent figure in health activism, Govinda KC, has staged several hunger strikes to pressure the government to undertake necessary reforms in the medical education sector. He recently called for an end to the haphazard granting of affiliation to many new medical […]
Paul Buchanan: Social media and the patient experience
The creation of the Diabetes Online Community, #gbdoc, in 2012 was a consequence of my diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes. Previously a stranger to the “health” world there was now an imperative to learn, and learn quickly, how to live with and manage a life-long chronic condition. The team of doctors and nurses who initially diagnosed […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Drugs and medicaments
When is a drug not a drug? The word “drug” first appeared, in various forms, in Middle French and English in the late 14th century, without recorded antecedents. It originally meant “any substance, of animal, vegetable, or mineral origin, used as an ingredient in pharmacy, chemistry, dyeing, or various manufacturing processes” (Oxford English Dictionary). It […]