Rhona MacDonald and Richard Lane discuss this week in the life of The Lancet Student. Rhona also interviews Joshua Schulman-Marcus (a fourth year medical student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA, Sarnoff Cardiovascular Foundation Fellow, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston AND prolific writer and blogger for The Lancet Student) about the three part series he has written for The Lancet Student on the global diabetes epidemic. Part one is on foot disease, part 2 focuses on eye disease, and part 3-just published this week-is on access to insulin and other drugs that help to manage diabetes. 

 

 Rhona MacDonald interviews Joshua Schulman-Marcus: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Goran Mijaljica, Secretary General of the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations gives his take on the European Regional Meeting  of IFMSA in Brijuni, Croatia-RhonaOnly a few weeks from the March Meeting in Mexico, IFMSA had it’s European regional meeting held in Croatia, in conjunction with the NCM of the European Medical Students Association.

The breath taking archipelago of Brijuni, a national park comprised of 14 islands, hosted more than 250 medical students from across Europe. The theme of the meeting was Organ donation and transplantation, and I had the privilege of coordinating the theme sessions, as well as to invite external speakers. Being a coordinator of the IFMSA transnational Organ donation project for 2 years (2005., 2006.), I was really happy to see that this theme was chosen for this meeting!

The first lecture, ‘Organ donation and transplantation in Croatia’, was given by Dr. Mirela Bušić, the national transplant coordinator from the Ministery of Health and Social Welfare. Concluding her presentation, Dr. Bušić quoted the WMA Statement on Human Organ Donation and Transplantation: “Medical students and practicing physicians should seek the necessary training for this task, and the appropriate authorities should provide the resources necessary to secure that training”. (more…)

Medical students Vanessa Jessop from Edinburgh University, Simon Lex from Dundee University, and Tammy Towers from Manchester University, were part of the UK delegation to the 5^th European Regional Meeting of the IFMSA in Croatia. They tell us all about it here. And what an amazing venue!- RhonaBrijuni National Park
Last weekend Croatia played host to the 5th European Regional Meeting of the International Federation of Medical Student’s Association. The conference was held in the Brijuni National Park, with over 200 delegates from across Europe. The theme of this year’s meeting was `Organ Donation and Transplantation in Europe´.

This was the first time that the European Medical Students Association (EMSA) and IFMSA have hosted a joint meeting; a significant step towards increased collaboration between the two organisations.

On Friday morning delegates enjoyed lectures from Drs Mirela Busic and Igor Povrzanovic on aspects of organ donation. Dr. Busic discussed the benefits of international cooperation in meeting the demand for donor organs and the public impact of networks such as Eurotransplant. (more…)

Just got this in from Sunil Bhopal and James Chan, medical students at Leeds University, UK. Although I know that many of you will not be able to go to the actual event, I hope you will be there in spirit and let’s hope that let’s just hope that the motion is carried. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? And then hopefully other UK Universities will follow suit. Sunil and James have promised to keep us posted! Please email them if you want more info. Rhona

GSK headquarters
Pick up any medical journal, read the papers for a few weeks and you’ll see it; the controversy that exists over doctors and their interactions with the pharmaceutical industry. A code of conduct governing this relationship exists. But is it correct? Does it go far enough?

Students of Leeds University medical school have decided that this is an issue that needs to be discussed. On April 25th, they will come together with doctors, academics and those from industry to explore this issue.

The motion “The house believes the relationship between the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry is detrimental to patient health” has been proposed for debate. If it is carried Leeds will follow the example of Stanford and Penn State Universities in the USA and become the UK’s first ‘PharmaFree’ medical school.

Please join us for this historic occasion. Sunil Bhopal ssbhopal@googlemail.com and James Chan: james.chan.uk@gmail.com

Hi- it’s me today. Just want to mention that we have just published three new articles. In Creating global doctors, Dianna Louie and Shafik Dharamsi from the University of British Columbia, Canada,  discuss the role of health workers as a health advocate and use Dianna’s experiences in Uganda to illustrate their points. And in AMSA international chapters, Megan Maraynes from St George’s University, Grenada, discusses how the American Medical Students Association (AMSA) inspires medical students to take a global perspective. Finally, Dan Keith from Oxford University, UK, shares his elective experiences of delivering babies in Sarajevo. His photos are superb and I have included one here of an abandoned helicopter which Dan came across in a stroll through a park, even though it is 12 years since the war ended.

And I would be very interested in your views (and poll votes) on the food security versus biofuels debate that is currently going on at The Lancet Global Health Network. As the author of the blog entry says (whoever she is!!!) “Without doubt, more biofuels means higher food prices and more people on the brink of starvation. A paper by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) concluded that the number of food-insecure people in the world would rise by more than 16 million for every percentage increase in the real prices of staple foods, meaning that 1.2 billion people could be chronically hungry by 2025; 600 million more than previously predicted. These figures are deeply worrying. Surely the number of people in chronic hunger must come before an ill-thought biofuel target?” Rhona

Following on from his blog entry yesterday (and our blog entry from Joshua Schulman- Marcus), Danyaal Raza gives his take on the talk by Jeffrey Sachs at the weekend’s Unite for Sight conference including Sach’s 10-Point Memo addressed to the next President of the United States-Definitely worth a read! RhonaJeffrey Sachs talks to a packed house

Jeffery Sachs, perhaps the world’s most famous economist, delivered one of the final keynote speeches of Unite for Sight’s 5^th annual conference. He did so with the vigour that readers of his book The End of Poverty, and the passion that supporters of his Millennium Villages Project expect of him. What surprised myself and I suspect many others, was his unexpectedly political message.

He began with a discussion of the global pressures on food, oil and water being exerted by not only the economies of the west, but by the rising buying power of China, India and parts of the developing world. Is the answer to these escalating demands a reduction of consumption in the developed world? Is it to continue development at the expense of the environment? Perhaps we should deny the economic independence of the world’s poor as a means of capping global consumption? To all, Sachs categorically says ‘no’. Instead, he challenged the crowd, filled with countless students, to implement solutions reconciling these large questions. Many of which, he added, he has began to address in his new book Common Wealth (available outside the auditorium and which I happily bought; if anyone knows how to work ‘the market’, I suppose it’s an economist).

The hammer fell when he began to talk of the changes that needed to be made in his native United States. (more…)

Joshua Schulman-Marcus, a 4th year medical student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, was also at the Unite for Sight Conference (also see the entry from Danyaal Raza below) and gives his take on the weekend-Rhona

Unite for Sight
I am writing from New Haven, Connecticut on the second day of the Unite for Sight international health conference. The first day was quite busy, with about 2,200 attendees attending dozens of sessions. Most are from the United States, though there are a fair number from international venues as well. In contrast to some international health conferences, here I have met many attendees from the disciplines of development, nursing, economics, business, and even law. This has made the exchange of ideas far more vibrant than I would have expected, and last night I spent some time wondering how I could apply these ideas to my own personal projects.

The conference opened with lectures from some of the luminaries in global health. Dr. Allan Rosenfield from the Columbia University School of Public Health presented a thoughtful discussion on maternal mortality, and the idea of training nonphysicians to do cesarean sections in underserved areas. (more…)

Danyaal Raza, a medical student from The University of Western Ontario, Canada, reports on the first day of the 5^th Annual Unite for Sight Conference  at Yale-RhonaDanyaal

Unite for Sight’s 5^th Annual Conference  began this weekend at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Running the course of the weekend, UFS has brought together a broad range of speakers discussing global health issues, extending beyond the organization’s ophthalmologic focus. I was fortunate enough to be in an auditorium of over 2000 during a keynote address delivered by Dr. Jim Kim. For anyone familiar with Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains or the work of Paul Farmer, Dr. Kim is considered a remarkable man. To global health advocates, he is what Larry Bird  is to many basketball fans; as elegant with words as Bird is with 3-pointers and as effective in his health projects as Bird was in winning NBA championship games.

Using past TB and HIV/AIDS projects as a starting point and reflecting on his love/hate relationship with the WHO, Dr Kim drove home a message has began to make waves in the global health community; the importance of effective health delivery. In the past, the struggle to obtain appropriate financing was ever present. However, with the founding of the Gates Foundation and the contributions of Warren Buffet, more and more NGO’s are gaining financial traction. (more…)

Countdown to MDG 4 & 5 -of critical importance
I want to point you in the direction of quite a few things today so here are your tasks for the weekend! First, please see the blog entry below about the interview with Paul Hunt, the UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Health, and read his reports if you can. Time very well spent in my opinion and you will learn a lot. Second, please note our new polls below and get voting (and note the results of the last ones- 79% of you think the pharmaceutical industry influences the medical profession a lot! How can we fight back?)  Third, have a listen (and a laugh) to this week’s Lancet Student podcast. I do get on my high horse at times. This week my rant is against the whole premise of the MDGs which accepts that even if we reach all of the MDG targets we will still only have achieved health for half. Whatever happened to health for all? Fourth, you MUST read this week’s issue of The Lancet which entirely focuses on the Countdown to MDG 4 (child survival) and MDG 5 (maternal survival). This is SUCH an important issue and not to be missed if you are at all serious about global health. All of the PDFs of the entire issue are available on The Lancet Global Health Network without any of the hassle of usernames and passwords etc. Fifth, have a listen to the press conference of the launch of this special Countdown issue. The presentations give some added insights. Sixth, please read and absorb the key challenges from the Countdown issue that I have listed for you below. They are quite sobering and we MUST all do something to tackle them if there is any hope of meeting the MDG targets-on that note, I hope you have a productive weekend- Rhona (more…)

Jonny Currie, a third year medical student from Bristol University reports on a public interview hosted by the medical humanitarian NGO Merlin between  BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton, and another hero of mine, Paul Hunt, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health. I was there too and I think Paul definitely won everyone over. I also just want to draw your attention to all of Paul’s marvellous reports  which he has submitted to the Human Rights Council  and I would strongly encourage you to read them if you can -  Rhona

Paul Hunt, The UN Special Rapporteur on The Right to Health
The universal “right to the highest attainable standard of health” is both a widely applauded but all the while under-realised concept.  Deliberations on a human ‘right to health’ abound from debates within the scholarly classroom right up to multilateral symposia in the UN.  To add to this diverse mix,  the humanitarian aid agency Merlin alongside other interested parties convened in a small upper-room in a London club to give the public the opportunity of interviewing Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur on the “Right to Health” on what such a concept means, and how we as a global society can go about enacting it.

Numerous figures from the NGO and development arena assembled to hear Edward Stourton,  a Radio 4 broadcaster and marvellously inquisitive interviewer, provide Professor Hunt the chance to give his conceptions of this human right, the barriers to its realisation, and what his job entailed.  Mr Stourton provided a certain flair of interviewing that at times served well to put Professor Hunt on the spot, though he rose well to the challenge. (more…)