I have just been to a lecture – whose title I’ve stolen for this blog – given by Inez de Beaufort, Professor of Healthcare Ethics at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Subtitled ‘Ethics, obesity and public health’, and organised by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics. […]
Yesterday was Independence Day in Sierra Leone, marking the start of the country’s fiftieth year since independence. It was also the launch of the President’s free health care initiative for pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under 5. […]
Congratulations are due to Which? magazine for taking up the issue of hospital parking in their May issue. According to a survey they conducted recently, 49 percent of the public who had used NHS car parks in the previous two years had found that parking arrangements had made their hospital visits more stressful. The article […]
The volcanic activities of Eyjafjallajökull have diminished. On the 26 April 2010 it was only pumping out 30 ton/sec of volcanic material (gases and ash) into the air compared to the 700 tons/sec during the first week of its eruption. The good news is that air travel is no longer affected to same extent as it was, though […]
Every time the telephone rings, it could be you. Waiting for a transplant is long and difficult. With renal dialysis you are hopefully quite stable, but with other conditions it may be a race against time. Every phone call could be your lifeline so the telephone becomes the focus of your day. Silence weighs heavily. […]
When you are accustomed to living in closed compounds you develop a long-distance stare; a meditative gaze you adopt automatically when left to yourself. This abstracted state serves two purposes. It allows you to take a little break, to escape for a moment without physically leaving the property, and it helps you overlook the razor […]
About 200 million adults a year undergo major surgery that is not cardiac surgery, and about 5 million of those people suffer a major vascular complication. That, said P J Devereaux from McMaster University at the Oxford Health Alliance meeting in Delhi last week, is about the same as the number of people contracting HIV each […]
I am writing this from the lounge of the international airport at New Delhi, India. Today is our third consecutive day at the airport and the seventh day of being stranded away from our home in Essex. We were supposed to be flying back last Sunday that is until the volcano erupted in faraway Iceland […]
World Malaria Day on April 25 aimed to highlight global efforts to effectively control malaria. This year, the day was marked by some important developments in malaria prevention and control, which may impact on malaria field programmes. […]
Like most decisions of great consequence, I happened upon the route for Cycling The 6 in a pub garden, beer in one hand, mini-Atlas in the other. The plan hatched was to travel the length of six continents, all by bicycle. I completed my ST training in General Medicine in a London hospital and finally […]