In 2006 India experienced one of its worse chikungunya outbreaks, when more than 1.5m cases were reported. The current outbreak in Delhi has claimed at least 15 lives so far, and the city’s hospitals are overloaded because of demand from neighbouring states such as Rajsthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana. […]
Jeanne Lenzer: Clinton and Trump on healthcare
The Presidential Debate That Wasn’t The 90 minute presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump ended last night without a single word about healthcare. Yet two-thirds of voters said “the future of Medicare and access and affordability of healthcare are top priorities for the candidates to be talking about during the 2016 presidential campaign.” [1] […]
Catherine Hough-Telford: How have pediatricians’ experiences of vaccine delays and refusals changed?
It’s unbelievable that one of the most remarkable innovations of our time—one that has prevented millions of deaths—has come under so much fire by a cacophony of misinformed voices in recent years. As the saying goes, vaccines have become a victim of their own success. The relative rarity of vaccine preventable diseases in the US, […]
Richard Smith: Being creative in developing primary care
Primary care covers the whole population, but it’s underfunded and has increasing difficulty recruiting doctors; and there are worries about equity and the quality of care. This could be the NHS in Britain, but it’s the health system in Florianópolis, Brazil. The NHS can learn from the Brazilian experience, and Jorge Zepeda, a family physician […]
Paul Wicks: Google’s Deepmind health group invites patient participation
In the aftermath of some difficult questions posed by privacy advocates around the Royal Free’s pilot of Deepmind’s Streams app, this week Deepmind Health invited over 120 patients, patient advocates, carers, and health researchers to a half-day event at Google Headquarters in London. For the past decade the search giant Google has been able to […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—26 September 2016
NEJM 22 Sep 2016 Vol 375 Learning to love data parasites Back in January, the chief editor of the NEJM joined many other leading journal editors in signing a radical proposal for data sharing tabled by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. But at the same time he co-authored an editorial saying that the […]
Naveed Ahmed Khan: The increase in cases of brain eating amoeba
There has been an alarming increase in the number of reported deaths due to brain-eating amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, a parasite that invades the brain through the nose via water. [1] The parasite feeds on the brain and causes severe haemorrhage and inflammation resulting in widespread brain tissue destruction. Even with treatments, the fatality rate is […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Sanguine—hopeful, not bloody minded
The first of Galen’s four fluid humours of the body, αἷμα, blood, was associated with the temperament that came to be known as sanguine, from the equivalent Latin word, sanguis. Sanguis meant the fluid that flows from wounds, the blood that colours the face red, bloodshed, as in battle or sacrifice, life blood or the […]
Paul Buchanan: No decision about me without me
Many are the conversations, opinions, statements, and arguments within the patient world about the meaning of that phrase “No decision about me without me”—but what does it actually mean, and to whom? Many of us have emotionally connected it to the phrase “Do No Harm” and think of it in the same terms, believing that […]
David Shaw: Delaying surgery for obese and smoking patients is illogical and unethical
It was recently reported that Vale of York clinical commissioning group (CCG) plans to delay all elective surgery for obese patients for a year until they lose 10% of their weight, and to smokers for six months unless they stop smoking for eight weeks. [1] Both the overall rationale for this policy and the clinical […]