The Calais Jungle is now all but rubble and mud. More than 10,000 refugees who inhabited the camp are dispersed across France. Many of them will be embarking on their new journey to claim asylum and start a new life in France, whilst some will have to face the bitter reality of returning to where […]
Thushara Matthias: Caring for older patients
I’m a postgraduate trainee from a developing country and have completed my local training in internal and general medicine to be a consultant physician. The rest of my training involves mandatory “foreign training” in an overseas country of our choice for one year. In most cases, doctors from my region choose either the United Kingdom […]
Aeesha NJ Malik: Integrating child health in Tanzania—where is the vision?
I first set foot in Tanzania 20 years ago as a medical student. Rather ambitiously at the time, I came with the intention of conducting an evaluation in Tanzania and the UK of the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative, which aimed to promote and facilitate breastfeeding. That work led to an editorial in The BMJ, which […]
Richard Smith: Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world, and why are Facebook and Harry Potter so popular?
When you enter the room in the Louvre that contains the Mona Lisa you find people crowded around the bullet-proof case that contains the Mona Lisa and largely ignoring the other paintings in the room, which include other masterpieces by Leonardo da Vinci. Four-fifths of the people who visit the Louvre do so to visit […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—21 November 2016
NEJM 17 Nov 2016 Vol 375 Diabetes kills in Mexico City “Overall, between 35 and 74 years of age, the excess risk of death associated with diabetes accounted for approximately one third of all deaths from vascular causes and one third of all other deaths.” That is a shocking statistic and it applies to the largest […]
Juliet Cohen: Proving torture–home office mistreatment of expert medical evidence
The encounter that changed my medical career was in 1990, with an interpreter working in a Red Cross clinic overseas. We had become friends over the weeks that I worked there and one day he showed me his application to be considered a refugee. He detailed the events leading to him having to flee his […]
Stuart Brown: Antimicrobial resistance—a local, national, and global threat
I have presented at many events on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and come across difficult to treat infections in my own practice, but I had never seen an untreatable infection. That changed this summer when we had our first carbapenemase producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) infection, an OXA-48. A normally difficult to treat infection with limited treatment options, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Rhetoric and oratory
You might think that “rhetoric” and “oratory” came from the same linguistic root. But it appears not, which is fitting, considering the difference in meaning. Scholars tell us that rhetoric comes from the hypothetical IndoEuropean root WER, meaning to speak, and oratory from ŌR, meaning a sound, or more specifically a ritual formula, particularly one […]
Tessa Richards: Patients’ role in making care safer
Patients don’t only access services. They observe them acutely too. As they lie in hospital beds and are “processed” through outpatients and emergency centres they perceive quality and safety at the sharp end. They and their carers are also innately alerted to when “something is not right;” either in themselves, or the health system. So […]
Showing solidarity with health professionals everywhere on the need for water, sanitation, and hygiene
Delia Jepson and Cheryl Stanley, midwives, Liverpool Women’s Hospital We started this year by travelling to rural Tanzania with WaterAid to experience what daily life is like for the committed midwives working in a busy referral hospital where the taps only worked sporadically. It is an experience that will never leave us—observing the caring and creative […]