Talk to almost any public health specialist and they’ll express their biggest concern about the current NHS reforms in England as fragmentation of the public health service. To understand why fragmentation is a bad thing, we first need to know what it is that could be broken up. Public health has traditionally consisted of three main domains […]
Tag: public health
Rebecca Welfare on World TB Day: dilemmas in tuberculosis treatment
The weekly multidisciplinary committee on drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) had assembled to discuss the case of a young man who had started treatment for multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) 12 months previously. […]
Julian Sheather: Oh for a beaker of mirth
Being a self-sacrificing soul I recently enrolled myself in a critical piece of public health research: I gave up alcohol for January. If appetite is the new front-line in health, if our desires are becoming the death of us, then self-restraint must be the new penicillin, and, to squeeze the analogy a little, the Petri-dish […]
Greg Ramm: Living with dignity in Haiti’s earthquake camps
It was difficult to know exactly what to expect as I arrived in Haiti one year after the terrible earthquake. There had been so many reports – some of them contradictory – and I looked forward to seeing things for myself. Stepping off the aircraft and into the warm morning air of the capital city, […]
Tony Falconer on leading healthier lives
The coalition government seems keen to engage with individuals and organisations, to help them help themselves lead healthier lives. This, we are told, will be done through encouragement and collaboration as outlined in a paper by the Cabinet Office behavioural insights team at the end of last year. […]
Tessa Richards: Jobs for health
As UK participants returned from last week’s European Health Forum in Gastein (read more), Austria, newspaper headlines calling for “Cuts in wasteful NHS bureaucracy” and “Pay freezes for high earners” will have reinforced the messages they heard. Debate focused on the impact of the financial crisis on health and what governments should do about it. […]
Syed Shah on being the first case of influenza A/H1N1 in the United Arab Emirates
I had the honor of being the first case reported officially from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It was 3 am on Sunday, 17th May when I arrived at Dubai Airport, via Calgary and Heathrow, after spending a week with my family in Saskatoon, Canada. Later that day I returned to my department at the […]
Jane Parry on flu
Hong Kongers have lived through more than their fair share of bird flu scares across the border in China over the last few years, and, of course, Sars in 2003 when 299 people in the city died of the disease. Then there was the cull of Hong Kong’s entire poultry population back in 1997. It’s […]
Eva Brencicova: A first date to remember
Initially I thought the lady was choking. I was close to rushing towards her to perform some of the jazzy first-aid moves I learnt in medical school (and become the star of the evening). But very soon it became fairly obvious that Heimlich manoeuvre & co. were uncalled-for. Dignity and self-control werewhat this woman was […]
Tauseef Mehrali on casting the safety net
In his brilliant surrealist novel Death at Intervals, José Saramago conjures up a dreamlike, yet all too soon nightmarish, scenario wherein the people of an anonymous landlocked European country simply stop dying. Death, the scythe-wielding skeletal spectre, quite literally goes on strike. She gives up her day job to pursue a romantic, bordering on voyeuristic, […]