to the deserving: Binayak Sen has been chosen for the highest international honour in global health and human rights, the Jonathan Mann Award for 2008. A doctor and a human rights activist, he
When Edzard Ernst became the UK's first professor of complementary medicine, he was attacked by both alternative therapists and conventional doctors. The doctors have come round, but he is now alternative medicine's public enemy number one after sticking the needle into everything from acupuncture to homeopathy. He insists he is just being a good scientist, but it has been a long journey for someone whose family doctor was a homeopath.
WHO's 60th anniversary celebrations have left Africa in the cold. Across the continent countries face high mortality rates and deep misery, and the regional office of the UN's specialised health organisation
For Indian doctors, western shores could be greener. But for an increasing number of foreign patients, Indian hospitals are fast becoming their first choice. Over 1.5 lakh medical tourists travelled to India in 2002 alone, bringing in earnings of $300 million. Since then, the number of such travellers has been increasing by at least 25% every year. A CIIMcKinsey report projects that earnings through medical tourism would go up to $2 billion by 2012.
The pivot around which the improvement of maternal health revolved was the Indian woman doctor and her growing presence from the 1900s was to be seen at hospitals and welfare centres in the Bombay presidency, promoting knowledge of more hygienic birthing methods and safe infant care.
Doctors in 12 states went on strike in the first week of December protesting mandatory rural posting. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare came up with the proposal in July. A
In 2005, road traffic injuries resulted in the death of an estimated 110 000 persons, 2.5 million hospitalizations, 8-9 million minor injuries and economic losses to the tune of 3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in India.
Two Ugandan doctors who had been helping in the fight against an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus have died, bringing the death toll to 21, Ugandan health officials said on December 5. The
We are writing to make known to the international medical community the shocking imprisonment of Binayak Sen on May 14, 2007, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. A well known paediatrician and public-health specialist, Sen's is a rare example of the cost of involvement in civil rights activism by physicians. He is being charged by the local police with illicit communication with Maoists in custody. (Correspondence)
>> A shortage of health care workers is paralysing the health system in Southern Africa. The shortfall has imperilled the lives of millions in Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique, particularly in rural
