” I believe that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP, but by the condition of its worst off. ” Zygmunt Bauman Equitable access to health care was the theme of this years meeting of the Global Forum of Health Research in Beijing and Margaret Chan, director general of WHO set […]
Tessa Richards at the European Health Forum Gastein, 3-6 October
By 0900 on the 3 Oct the hills of the picturesque Gastein valley in Austria were alive with the sound of some 600 politicians, policy makers, academics, industry leaders, and NGO’s, exchanging views on the future of health care in Europe. Eight hours earlier it had been silent and chilly, as three of us prowled […]
Fiona Godlee: Recent advances in clinical medicine, public health, and health policy. Royal College of Physicians and London School of Economics. Athens 20-22 September
Back in Athens. Much cooler than a month ago and the fires on the Peleponese are out. This meeting, arranged by Ian Gilmore and George Kitas of the Royal College of Physicians and Elias Mossialos, director of LSE Health, has an ambitious inter-professional scope but a smallish group of delegates, more than half from the […]
Trish Groves in Edinburgh: Towards a smoke free society
Monday 10 September 2007 I walked into Edinburgh’s impressive international conference centre just as a couple of minibuses pulled up outside, spilling a gaggle of protesters armed with cigarettes, Scottish flags, and placards decrying “junk science”. […]
Tessa Richards at the World Demographic Association’s 3rd “World Ageing and Generations Congress,” September 6-9
“The older I get the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball the further I am rolled the more I gain” Susan Anthony (suffragist) 1890-1906. On the airport bus en route to the conference I eavesdrop on a conversation which contains the words “patient” and “the NHS.” […]
Fiona Godlee: International Congress of Pediatrics, Athens
To Athens for the 25th International Congress of Pediatrics. Very hot indeed – over 40 degrees. Smoke from the fires raging on the hills of the Peloponnese was clearly visible from the plane as we landed. A pall of ash hung over the south east of the city. All television news channels were fixed on […]
JAMA 22/29 Aug 2007 Vol 298
A question for all GP readers – where do you keep your paediatric sphygmomanometer cuff? Do you know if your practice actually has one? […]
NEJM 23 Aug 2007 Vol 357
The world’s largest swede weighed in at 171.56kg, according to a highly entertaining website mocking the rutabaga (which is the American word for this estimable root vegetable); […]
BMJ 25 Aug 2007 Vol 335
Every week or two we detect an irregular pulse and send the patient off for an ECG, but we’ve never audited how many with ?AF written on the form actually have it. Some researchers in the Birmingham (UK) Department of Primary Care, however, have made something of a specialty of atrial fibrillation […]
Lancet 25 Aug 2007 Vol 370
Here is a painstaking meta-analysis of trials involving 64,000 people randomised to take calcium, vitamin D (in various doses) or placebo for the prevention of fractures and bone loss in people aged over 50. […]