Caryl Churchill’s 45 minute play on death at the National Theatre begins with people at a drinks party after a funeral. Nobody is much upset. “The waters close over very quickly after a death,” my friend Vitek said to me last week. People talk across each other. There is no real communication. We learn little […]
The BMJ has chosen Doctors of the World for this year’s Christmas charity appeal. The charity’s executive director, Leigh Daynes explains how Doctors of the World is helping to bring care to the most vulnerable people across Europe and beyond. Have you ever been so cold and wet that your bones felt numb? I recently […]
Many non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are diagnosed in outpatient clinics and hospitals when patients present with acute illnesses. After receiving a diagnosis during the healthcare visit, the chronic management of most NCDs needs compliance with treatment and monitoring of disease process. In the absence of good community models, the outcomes of most NCD control programmes can […]
“He says that anti-seizure medications can have serious side effects. That’s why they can’t be stocked in our community health centre,” reports Jeevan, after returning from meeting the medical officer in charge at a nearby community health centre. “The block medical officer told me that anti-seizure drugs could be dangerous in the hands of MBBS […]
Conflict of interest: the proposals reviewed here are similar to those advocated in a 2014 BMJ editorial “Reforming the Cancer Drugs Fund” to which I was a co-author. I have had no involvement with the development of the proposed policy. The Cancer Drugs Fund continues to pose problems not least a rising spend, up from […]
So what? There has been a huge increase in the number of junior doctors who have joined the BMA since June when Jeremy Hunt began new tactics with NHS staff. Repeated inflammatory and insulting statements like “when you turn medicine into a Monday to Friday profession” have enraged doctors to an unprecedented state. The strike […]
Grania Brigden discusses the findings of the Out of Step report on national tuberculosis (TB) policies. The report is being launched on 2 December at the 46th Union World Conference on Lung Health, Cape Town, South Africa. TB is winning a deadly race—this year it overtook HIV as the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing 1.5 million people […]
Should we be responding to hypertension in low and middle income countries? Of course we should. Hypertension kills 10 million people a year prematurely, and 80% of those deaths occur in low and middle income countries. Less than 5% of people with hypertension in those countries have their blood pressure well controlled, and yet we […]
The government have accepted the offer to further negotiations on the junior doctors’ contract, and many doctors in training have breathed a sigh of relief that this dispute may be settled without the need for a strike. We are ready to take industrial action if that is what is required for the government to listen […]
On World AIDS Day and with the ICASA conference ongoing, Helen Bygrave discusses the implications of the recently announced World Health Organization (WHO) “treat all” policy. On the back of the headline studies Temprano, START, and new data from HPTN 052, the WHO recently announced the “treat all” policy: everyone diagnosed with HIV should start […]