• Jacky Davis and Ilora Finlay go head to head in a debate on the Assisted Dying Bill set to be read in parliament next month. They debate whether the bill’s provision requiring a High Court judge to approve patients for assisted death is enough to protect vulnerable people. […]
Edward Fitzgerald: Celebrating global health on world humanitarian day
Lifebox Foundation is celebrating surgery and anaesthesia humanitarian heroes for WHD. Follow our #HumanitarianHeroes campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to find out more. When I was 4 years old I had grommets inserted in both ears—small plastic tubes through the eardrum to help resolve an infection. Around the same time I had a mole […]
Aser García Rada: Providing humanitarian aid at one of the oldest refugee camps in the world
During four weeks this June, along with other colleagues from the Spanish and the Austrian Red Cross, I was deployed as a delegate of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to respond to a massive influx of asylum seekers in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in […]
The BMJ Today: heroin, e-cigarettes, and alcohol
• Michael McCarthy reports on a new $13.4m White House initiative to tackle the growing heroin epidemic in the USA. Around half will go to bolstering law enforcement efforts, with the remainder spent on prevention and a new “heroin response strategy” in five of the hardest hit regions. […]
Nilanjan Bhor: Moving towards inclusive healthcare for migrants in India
According to the 2011 census, approximately 400m of India’s 1.21bn population are “internal migrants.” These migrant communities in Indian cities constitute a large proportion of people living in urban slums. Some of them have migrated from rural to urban settings as an entire family, others as parents, and some as individuals (the head of the […]
Samir Dawlatly: Can you measure what is good about general practice?
The Health Foundation, at the behest of the government, is gathering thoughts from professionals and the public on the use of data to inform the quality of primary care until 24 August 2015. Although they say that this will not be used to “rate” practices, data about so-called quality has been used to “band” or […]
The BMJ Today: Antibiotic prescribing and smoke free legislation
• GPs should consider delaying prescription of antibiotics, says NICE Data indicate that 90% of GPs feel pressurised into prescribing antibiotics to patients unnecessarily, according to a news story by Ingrid Torjesen. Mark Baker, director of the Centre for Clinical Practice at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), said on 17 August that […]
Peter Brukner: The challenges for team doctors in professional sport
A recent incident in the English Premier League has highlighted the conflict of interest for doctors in professional sporting teams. In the final few minutes of a match between Chelsea and Swansea on Saturday 8 August, the first round of the 2015-16 season, with the scores level at two all and the Chelsea team reduced […]
Joe Knight: Extreme weather and food supply shortages
It’s a given that Obama will never agree with Putin on Ukraine nor Ahmadinejad on nuclear proliferation. There are however, some common enemies that are supposed to draw the warring nations of the earth into one corner and demand something like a “global” response. These are usually issues of health and the environment, where the […]
The BMJ Today: Doctors’ salaries, football, and fossil fuels
• David Oliver: What should senior doctors be paid? In a column David Oliver hits out at politicians trying to “whip up outrage” at the pay of senior doctors, arguing that while substantial, they receive “the going rate for senior, experienced, salaried public servants” such as police superintendents and senior civil servants. […]