JAMA 21 Mar 2012 Vol 307 1161 When in Japan, do not attempt to drop down dead. In 800 fire stations around the Islands of the Sun, teams of emergency medical service personnel stand ready to rush out and perform resuscitation for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, which cannot be discontinued until an ambulance arrives and you […]
Punch-drunk on power after his success at sticking up two fingers to the entire health profession at the passage of the Health & Social Care bill in Parliament last week, Andrew Lansley has apparently found a new mission—to harass doctors and clinics who provide abortions, both in the private sector which he otherwise seems to […]
The prime reason that this legislation will prove a disaster for patients is obvious. If you are relying on the NHS for care it is your GP who will be the sole arbiter of the care you receive, and most importantly will control the funding for any referral to secondary care. GPs will not be […]
Global aspirations This year’s STOP TB partnership World TB Day campaign approach is ambitious, but inspirational. We hope to see zero drug-resistant TB deaths in children in our lifetime. As long as there is still no effective vaccine to stop TB, the same nurturing relationship on which children thrive puts them at risk of catching […]
Of the 9.4 million new tuberculosis (TB) cases diagnosed each year, approximately 5% are multidrug resistant (MDR). This World TB Day there is an emphasis on children, which is long overdue. Until now, children have largely been excluded from discussions and advances in tackling TB. This neglect means the true number of children affected by […]
Last year I attended a meeting in Heidelberg on treatment of mental health problems and came away with a bleak view of the lack of progress. This week in another delightful university town, St Andrews, I heard more positive messages. Progress with traumatic brain injury? Traumatic brain injury is currently one of medicine’s failures. In […]
In 1988 the World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling for the eradication of polio by 2000. There were 350 000 cases in 1988, and by 2000 the number had been reduced by 99%—to around 600. Since then the number has stuck at around 600, and there is anxiety that the last 1% of cases […]
As a project manager for MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders), a medical emergency humanitarian agency, I attended this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas, in the company of a friend and collaborator from Google who is involved in crisis mapping. We gave a presentation on some mapping work we had done […]
The recent debate in Washington about birth control being mandated for coverage by employers or by health insurance as well as the 101st celebration of International Women’s Day makes me feel empowered to write about a women’s health related issue that I am experiencing now as part of life in the widow-hood. When the Colonel […]
Should the journal article change, and if so, how? In this multimedia age, the workforce is increasingly populated by people who grew up with the internet, scholarly publishers anticipate the demise of the traditional article and spend lots of time rethinking how best to present the information it contains. […]