Today I received a sad email about a 24 year old family friend who died in a road traffic accident in Mumbai. Rohan Sardar skid on the road while riding his bike, suffered a head injury and, after much delay at the ill equipped, civic run Shatabdhi Hospital, was moved to Kokilabai Dhirubai Ambani Hospital […]
William Cayley: Is primary care in the US really the future?
Is primary care really the future? I’d like to say “Yes,” but I’m not so sure… (at least in the USA). There has been much talk and writing about the growing need for primary care physicians to serve our population, and one “promise” of the Affordable Care Act is “its potential to make primary care […]
Julian Sheather: Time to debate the ethics of robot care?
We take it for granted that compassion is at the heart of good care. But what if the hand that reaches out to yours is a robot’s? What if the last face you see on earth is a facsimile? The use of robotics is well established in parts of medicine. Surgery involving remote manipulation of […]
The BMJ Today: Further adventures of the polypill
Remember the polypill, the combination of several active ingredients in one tablet that promised to revolutionise the prevention of cardiovascular disease? It is a question we have often asked in the offices of The BMJ, the journal in which the idea of the polypill was first mooted in 2003 by Nicholas Wald and Malcolm Law. […]
Jim Murray: Abbvie withdraw case against European Medicines Agency
AbbVie have withdrawn their legal challenge against the release of certain company documents on Humira (adalimunab) by the EMA. This followed an offer by the agency to redact parts of the document originally intended for release. Is this good news? There are those who think it is, but we cannot be entirely sure at this […]
David Oliver: How real life stories can help us understand the challenges of care for older people
On television we can often tell more from peoples’ words or reactions than from any scripted voiceover. In “Protecting our Parents”—a three part BBC 2 documentary, due to be screened on 17 April, this holds very true. Our society is often afraid to face up to the realities of old age, and a youth fixated […]
The BMJ Today: Why does female genital mutilation persist?
A news story by Clare Dyer and a rapid response from the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, Alison Saunders, keep The BMJ’s spotlight on female genital mutilation. For a long time these horrific practices were downplayed as “circumcision” or “cutting.” But female genital mutilation includes, without medical indication, excision of all or […]
Kailash Chand: The survival of general practice is the survival of the NHS
General practice in England is under intense pressure at the moment from a variety of sources, including the plan to keep surgeries open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week. These are combining to overstretch practices in an unsustainable manner. A key factor is that patient demand is constantly increasing because of an ageing […]
Candace Imison: The future provider landscape—are foundation trusts taking us down a dead end?
A year ago NHS commissioning was ripped up by its roots, divided up and then pushed back into the soil. Like the plants in my garden that get such rough treatment, commissioners are struggling to flourish. The NHS provider architecture has, so far, had more gentle treatment, and the journey towards “liberalisation,” that started in […]
Nick Harvey: There’s now a cure for hepatitis C… but the poor can’t afford it
Picture the scenario: a disease is destroying your liver and there’s a chance you will die. There’s a cure, but you can’t have it as it costs more than you earn. There are tens of millions more of people like you. Hundreds of thousands of them die every year. It sounds like some sci-fi dystopia, […]