Courtesy of Oxfam:Remember the floods in Pakistan,  Bangladesh, and Uganda a few months ago? Now floods are threathening southern Africa

I don’t know about you, but I seem to get an overwhelming number of newsletters by email. I signed up to them so I only have myself to blame! One of my favourites is alertnet from Reuters which focuses on global humanitarian events and news. They do one every day but they also have a v useful weekly one which sums up world events. But they are also very disturbing as this week’s one I have copied below clearly demonstrates. If you are interested in signing up yourself, email alertnet@reuters.com Rhona

Southern Africa on red alert for bursting rivers and extra-high child death rates from hunger, cholera and malaria

About 1.5 million Zambians may have to flee their homes because of floods that have killed at least six people in neighbouring Mozambique and cut off parts of Zimbabwe, where millions already battle to survive amid a deep economic crisis. Rivers are swollen, fields are waterlogged and more heavy rain is also forecast for many parts of Angola, Botswana, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa. Heavy downpours are common in southern Africa during the annual rainy season, which runs generally from November to April, but the relentless rain is unusual.

Experts fear it could be one of Mozambique’s worst floods ever, and a red alert was issued on Jan. 3. Many families still haven’t recovered from flooding last year, and most of the people who were resettled on higher ground are facing extreme food shortages, according to a report by British-based aid agency Save the Children. (more…)

Photo from http://www.measlesinitiative.org

It’s  refreshing to have some good news sometimes. A  news story by Clare Kapp in the January issue of The Lancet Infectious Diseases (TLID) reports some good news regarding measles vaccinations. I have copied it for you below. Rhona

The Lancet Infectious Diseases Newsdesk
According to new data, the global number of measles deaths fell by 68% from 757000 to 242000 between 2000 and 2006. This decrease was a result of a spectacular 91% reduction in Africa, where countries rallied behind concerted immunisation campaigns to achieve a rare success story for a continent blighted by public-health failures.

In Africa, deaths were cut from 396000 to 36000 by implementing the measles reduction strategy, which includes vaccinating all children before their first birthday and providing a second opportunity for measles vaccination through mass vaccination campaigns.

“The clear message from this achievement is that the strategy works”, said Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which was one of the founding partners of the Measles Initiative, together with WHO, UNICEF, the American Red Cross, and the United Nations Foundation. She said the focus would now move to India, where an estimated 10·5 million children are not immunised. Some 178000 people died of measles in south Asia last year—mostly in India and Pakistan—only 26% down from 2000. (more…)

In case you hadn’t noticed, the US presidential elections are later this year and things are hotting up just now as the Democrats and Republicans choose their presidential candidates. So, I thought you might be interested to hear what Joshua Schulman-Marcus, a 4th year medical student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, is up to today! Rhona

New Hampshire is in red

I am writing from the campaign headquarters of Barack Obama in Manchester, New Hampshire.  I’ve come up from Boston to help knock on doors for Obama, who is a major candidate in the Democratic presidential primary.  Since the New Hampshire primary is of great significance in selecting the candidates for the 2008 presidential election, today is promising to be a very exciting day.

In the current United States political system, the candidates for each of the major parties are chosen by a series of elections in different states.  By tradition, Iowa and New Hampshire are the first to vote in the nation, giving these small states disproportionate attention and power.  Generally, only those voters registered with a specific party can vote in that party’s primary.  Here in New Hampshire, however, a voter not affiliated with a political party (”independent”) can vote in either the Democratic or Republican primary.  As about 50% of the voters here are independent, it intensifies the competition for votes. (more…)

The Lancet Student’s main focus is on global health but today, I want to stray from that a bit to discuss medical training in the UK as it is causing such a furore here. I would also be interested to hear about what is happening with medical training wherever you are and if your country has got it as badly wrong as the UK has in the last 5 years.

Five years ago, Modernising Medical Careers was introduced to overhaul the medical education training in the UK. It has always been controversial as there was always the accusation that it was concerned with service requirements rather than professional ones, as it drastically shortens the training time to become a specialist. But last Spring, all hell broke loose when the new online application system was implemented without being properly trialed leading to all kinds of errors and basically wrecking many medical students and doctors’ careers. The online application system was stopped- thankfully- and this latest disaster led to the Tooke Inquiry regarding the whole of Modernising Medical Careers. The final report Aspiring to Excellence: The Final Report of the Independent Inquiry into Modernising Medical Careers, is published today and is the result of a wide consultation exercise with many medical colleges, organisations, institutions, and individuals. (You can read more about the process here)

The report is highly critical of Modernising Medical Careers and has multiple (47!) recommendations about what should happen next. Right at the beginning of the report, it also clearly identifies the key issues and then sets corrective action in these areas which I think this is really helpful so I have copied them for you below. (Even if you don’t know the set up in the UK, I am think that you will be able to follow the points and I have spelled out all of the abbreviations for you.) So hopefully-at last- something will now be done to help turn around this UK medical training disaster.   Rhona (more…)

See our perspectives’s piece by Guus Bol

Hello again. I hope you had a good weekend. The peer-reviewed articles which I have published on the site are all quite opinionated but there is nothing like a bit of controversy to start the week with a bang! These articles caused widespread disagreement within our student reviewer panel and so I take full responsibility for going ahead and publishing these revised versions!

First, Elizabeth Leyland discusses the social network phenomenon Facebook. She has her own particular views which I hope will spark some discussion. Personally, I don’t know where people find the time to use Facebook. I have been emailed by a lot of people asking me to be their friend—some of whom I know and quite a few I don’t—but I haven’t even had time to respond to their emails yet! Having said all that, I should say that The Lancet Student is investigating whether to have its own Facebook page.  What do you think? You can also vote on this in our poll below.

Then Tom Jaconelli discusses the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on doctors and medical students. We have covered this topic before in some blog entries around the time of the American Medical Student Association’s pharmfree week. This is a topic very close to my heart and I have given quite a few talks to students on this topic, the last one was in Bristol just before Christmas. I plan to write up what I say so I can share it with all of you, and I will also record my next talk if I can so you can listen to it too. Again, you can vote on this topic in our poll below on the degree of influence you think the pharmaceutical industry has on doctors and medical students. You can also add in your own choice to vote for if it is not already there. (more…)

Getty Images: The UN has been criticised for doing little to stop the sexual violence in DRC

Hello again. I am at last getting on top of things and I hope to publish some new articles on TheLancetStudent.com later today. For now though, I just wanted to update you on an issue that is very close to me. One of the most upsetting things in my life was hearing first hand the individual tragedies of women and girls who had been systematically raped as a so-called weapon of war. As they told their stories, I found it hard not to cry, even though they usually had the strength not to.  The Lancet Student has already published a very powerful article by Anne Aspler and Greg Queyranne on the  conflict and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in this week’s The Lancet, there is a world report by Wairagala Wakabi on the terrible situation there which I have copied in full for you below (but remember you can get it free on theLancet.com —you just need to register). The individual stories at the end are horrendous—just to warn you now.

One of the most appalling things about the situation is the world’s seeming indifference to what is going on—possibly because of all the wealth of minerals, including coltan which is used in mobile phones and ipods, and is widely available in the DRC. Let’s change that now and make some noise about the terrible abuse against women and girls that is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Rhona

Lancet World Report: Sexual violence increasing in Democratic Republic of Congo

As fighting flares up in the Democratic Republic of Congo, health workers are reporting a rise in brutal sexual violence against women. But, says Wairagala Wakabi, the international community continues to pay only lip service to the crisis in the central African country. (more…)