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Meducation is a great new network for sharing medical teaching materials from slideshows to revision notes. Take a look at the global health section in particular! |
Hello everyone!
We just wanted to draw your attention to Friday’s podcast which was posted today, where we have another brief chat on the concept of the Responsibility to Protect and other updates on the website.
Sophie and Christine
Student interns Sophie and Christine give an update on this weeks postings on The Lancet Student and a brief summary on the discussion that was hosted by Medecins Sans Frontiers-UK on the Responsbility to Protect, held this past Thursday. Also, another reminder to keep sending your articles and topic ideas for the Medsin-UK and The Lancet Student collaboration on “Power, Politics and Global Health“.
Hi there! Rhona here. I just want to draw your attention today to something that I feel very passionate about- water, sanitation, and hygiene. Anyone who has worked in a developing country knows the scale of the lack of access to clean water, sanitation, and hygiene and how much illness and misery this lack causes. Yet the international community does not seem to be doing much, if anything, to address this situation. Well, a WHO report published yesterday showed that a staggering 9.1% of the total global burden of disease could be prevented by improving access to clean water and improved sanitation and hygiene. Hopefully the international community will now wake up to this staggering fact and act accordingly. I have copied below The Lancet Editorial that discusses the report- and more-and you can also listen to the related Lancet Podcast here. I hope you have a great weekend. Rhona
Lancet Editorial: How to prevent a tenth of the global disease burden
In the 19th century, two public health engineers discovered that the reduction in child mortality brought about by improvements in water and sanitation exceeded the number of deaths that could be attributed to diarrhoea alone-the Mills-Reincke phenomenon. Unfortunately, until very recently, the world has ignored this phenomenon. Now several key reports emphasise the dramatic health (and economic) benefits that can be gained from improvements in water, sanitation, and hygiene and give plenty of incentive for the political will that we called for in our Editorial on March 29. (more…)
Hello everyone!
There has been a lot of interest in the ‘Power, Politics and Global Health’ magazine collaboration between Medsin-UK and The Lancet Student which was announced a few weeks ago, and we want to encourage you all to keep sending us your ideas and article submissions! To inspire potential article ideas, here is the list of general conference topics:
Plenary 1: Politics
A pressing question for those in global health is how political systems impact on health and health equity. How do different national political systems approach the question of health? And which is most effective?
This plenary will also address the means by which these vastly different national systems integrate into the international systems of governance affecting the global health agenda.
This plenary will focus on the following questions:
This is just to draw your attention to the 6 most recent additions to the Reading Room, including sample chapters from each book. For more information, please see here.
Crash Course: Paediatrics, Bhathalvalsa
Surface Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Examination, Lumley
Mary Carol Jennings continues her blog series on the pharmaceutical industry.
In the setting of the upcoming elections, my Senator, Jim DeMint, recently wrote a letter of opinion to the Washington Times opposing a global HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria bill that will provide life-saving medications and prevention against infectious disease in the developing world. Though the white house and a broad bipartisan coalition of legislators and community groups support this bill, his statements suggest that he considers this bill a superfluous, expensive government investment.When DeMint has called for our leaders to reduce the program’s funding beyond the scope, even, of his own countering bill, he also calls against extensive grassroots efforts based in South Carolina - his own constituents. Though every Senator has the right to block a bill, my Senator’s radical stance, out of touch with the desires of his base, threatens the democratic process to which the heart of America is so attuned.
Last week Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) published a new report, Broken
Laws, Broken Lives, introduced by Major General Taguba who led the US Army’s official investigation into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and testified before congress in May 2004. In his introduction to the report he commented that “there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes”. Last week I went hear Philip Gourevitch talk about his new book, Standard Operating Procedure, which considers the cases of those who were responsible for maintaining order at the ‘hard site’ in Abu Ghraib. His previous books include We Wish to Inform you That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families- Stories From Rwanda, for which he received the Guardian First Book award.
Julio Bracero and Preeti Kaur Rajpal, Editors-in-Chief of the Global Pulse, wrote in to tell us about the latest issue of GP.
The journal is available at: http://www.globalpulsejournal.com
All of us at Global Pulse (GP) are excited with this issue. We received incredible
submissions from medical students, literally around the world, and from
other disciplines as well.
Here is just a sample of what we feature in this issue:
An exclusive, in-depth interview with Dr. Joxel Garcia, the Assistant
Secretary for Health of the U.S., the Medical Director in the Regular
Corps of the Public Health Service, and official U.S. representative to
the World Health Organization (WHO)!
WHO’s Global Initiative for Emergency and Surgical Care
A (fantastic) photo essay from Guatemala
Additionally, we have added a blog to the website. We will update the blog, and the website, in the next couple of days.
GP is completely funded by AMSA (not sponsored by other third parties),
entirely run by medical students (that have to study for boards and work
the wards!), and like every AMSA project, we are passionate about what
we do! Click on the “about us” section to learn more.
Julio Bracero & Preeti Kaur Rajpal
Editors-in-Chief, Global Pulse
email contact: jbracero@globalpulsejournal.com
Richard Sutcliffe writes about medical ethics and end of life decision making in a short story format.
For a Thursday it’s unusually quiet on the wards and so you take the opportunity to see Eleanor an elderly lady who’s been admitted this morning with pneumonia.
‘Good morning, my names Dr Rochester, and how are we this morning?’ you enquire whilst at the same time making a mental note to say ‘you’ rather than ‘we’ since you fear it sounds condescending.
Access to medicines report
Hi there! It’s Rhona here. A few things to point out today. First, this week’s podcast is now up where our Lancet Student interns Sophie Mathewson and Christine Tapp chat about the all they have been up to in this busy week. We have also posted two new articles today. Lancet Student regular Joshua Schulman-Marcus reports on the anthropological and psychological impact of chronic diseases in developing countries and Itzhak Matthai asks why measles continues to kill hundreds of thousands of people despite the availability of a simple and cheap solution and despite a marked global improvement over the last few years.
Also a couple of reports I want to highlight this week. The first is the latest report from the African Progress Panel which reminds the G8 that they must keep its existing pledges towards Africa’s progress. This year’s G8 Summit starts on 7th July in Japan. The next is a brilliant new report and web initiative from the Access to Medicine Foundation that has created an access to medicines index that ranks the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies according to their efforts to increase universal access to medicines. GlaxoSmithKline comes top. Pfizer, the world’s largest drug company comes out a disappointing 17th, and Schering Plough languishes at the bottom. Check it out for yourselves! That’s all from me for now. Hope you have a great weekend. Rhona 
