Pressures on the workforce are going to be one of the big challenges for the NHS in a pandemic. One strategy which might help with this problem is to draw upon retired health professionals, who could fulfil a number of possible roles. This approach has been suggested in a number of pandemic influenza plans which we reviewed […]
Joe Collier on manoeuvres for avoiding Mexican flu
Mexican (swine) flu is clearly a threat. It is difficult to know exactly how best to avoid being infected, and although the risks for a Londoner are remote here are some changes I now make in my day-to-day life in an attempt to stave contagion off. […]
Julian Sheather on Bobby Baker’s diary drawings
Representations of mental illness are traditionally menaced by two kinds of distortion, distortions that seem to pull in opposing directions. The first, and far the most common, is that the mentally ill are asocial, chaotic and violent, their ungoverned minds unfitting them for ordinary human civility, their dangerous impulses requiring surveillance, confinement and control. […]
Tracey Koehlmoos on chronic disease management in Bangladesh
Maybe you have never thought about Bangladesh and do not know Dhaka from Dakar, but I do. I think about Bangladesh every day. I have lived in South Asia long enough to wrap my own sari and to think that purple and orange go together well at least some of the time. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 3 May 2009
A week of small increments than radical breakthroughs in the medical journal sees Richard break into poetry when faced with some particularly fanciful drug names… […]
Juliet Walker: BMJ in the news
The swine flu pandemic has dominated the news in the last few days. In a BMJ editorial, Richard Coker argues that, “as the virus is present in several countries, trying to contain it is probably not feasible any more. Efforts should now focus mainly on mitigation… Poorer countries are most vulnerable because they have underdeveloped […]
Richard Smith: The polypill is about demedicalisation not medicalisation
One of the things I love about the polypill is that it upsets everybody. (Just in case there are still people who haven’t heard of the polypill, it’s one pill that contains a statin, several drugs to lower blood pressure, and possibly aspirin that if everybody over 55 started taking daily might prevent three quarters […]
B M Hegde on flu
I was working in Ipswich in a cardiothoracic centre during the 1968-69 ‘Flu epidemic. During the Xmas week end of 1968 I had to be on call from Friday through Monday morning as most of my colleagues were on leave. I had to certify more than 50 deaths, mostly in the geriatric age group. Elderly […]
Adrian Gonzalez on swine flu in Mexico
In 2003 I was at the BMJ’s offices in Tavistock Square, London, when China’s SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic was at its peak. At that time the risk of infection seemed far away. Today is different; I’m living and working in Tlalpan, the district of Mexico City that holds the largest concentration of hospitals […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 27 April 2009
This week Richard ponders continuity of care, hibernating myocardium, and whether gluten free bread came before gluten free pasta – or the other way round. […]