One of the most enthralling articles that caught my attention last month was one entitled “Knowledge and practice of clinical ethics among healthcare providers in a government hospital, Chennai” published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics. It revealed that 30% of the responders did not give a definition of healthcare ethics (and I am inclined to think they did not know what it is), and 40% did not name a single ethical principle (again, I suspect they did not know of any). What I found more alarming was the fact that, “25 out of 51 physicians stated that they did not have time to listen to their patients.” 25 out of 51 physician responders also did not respond to the part of the questionnaire that asked them to name the principles of the Hippocratic Oath. All this makes me think that medical ethics in India is not well known, or adhered to strictly enough. more…

Fran Baum is blogging from the 8th World Health Organization Global Health meeting. Read her other blogs here.

It was good to hear Pekka Puska present Finland’s health promotion success which has resulted in an 80% reduction in cardiovascular disease over 30 years. He stressed that this has been a long term complex process. The Finns realised early on that victim blaming doesn’t work and that changing the environment is vital. So they regulated food supply so it was lower in fat and salt and worked with the food industry to encourage them to make food healthier. Subsidies for dairy products were reduced and dairy farmers were encouraged to change to berry farming. Finland’s experience raises the question of how governments globally can get “Big Food” to change its addiction to sugar and fat? more…

“A mother of two, her left arm amputated, she refuses to ever go near a sewing machine again.” In April this year, the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh collapsed killing over a 1000 people and injuring many more. Among poignant accounts of despair that emerged from the incident, I felt this woman’s situation reflected the nation’s dilemma as a whole. With nearly 80% of exports fuelled by the garment industry, the Bangladeshi government has to choose between the economics of being a cheap labour platform for big Western retailers and ensuring worker safety. Likewise, millions of Bangladeshi women make the difficult choice everyday to work in dangerous conditions to provide for their families. Are these even justifiable choices? more…

Fran Baum is blogging from the 8th World Health Organization Global Health meeting. Read her other blogs here.

The day started with Cecilia Vaca Jones, the Minister of Social Development in Ecuador presenting some impressive indicators of Ecuador’s progress. They have tripled health and social spending between 2006 and 2012 with the aim of eradicating poverty. Over this period, inequities have declined and the gini co-efficient has reduced from 0.54 to 0.47. The approach has been multi-sectoral including improving housing, health, and education, and increasing pension coverage for older and disabled people. more…

Two interesting documents that came across my desk this week got me thinking about how different HIV-related human rights look depending on where you’re standing. The first was a press release from UNAIDS, UNDP, and the International Commission of Jurists about the first ever judicial dialogue about HIV, human rights, and the law. The second was a news story from the China Daily about legislation recently passed in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region requiring real names to be used for HIV tests. more…

Fran Baum is blogging from the 8th World Health Organization Global Health meeting. Read her other blogs here.

Sauli Ninistö, President of Finland, opened the conference stressing that health is important for achieving other goals, but also has value in its own right. He spoke of Finland’s huge improvements in health since the 1940s achieved through investing the fruits of economic development in social and health infrastructure.

Congratulations to Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, for her powerful opening speech saying corporate interests on health pose a daunting challenge for health. She noted health is shaped by the “globalisation of unhealthy lifestyles,” leading to an epidemic of NCDs which is blowing out health budgets—e.g. diabetes consumes 15% of health budgets. Previously, progress has meant diseases vanished, whereas now NCDs are flourishing along with urbanisation and economic growth. more…

Today marks three years of working for Welbodi Partnership and it’s hard to believe that so much time has gone by. The last time I blogged, I wrote about getting more involved clinically. Well, that spell ended rather quickly, and before I knew it I was back to managing various projects.

Managing projects might sound a little boring, but really it’s quite exciting especially when I can be involved with big stuff that will make a huge difference. The fact that the projects I am working on will eventually save the lives of children in Sierra Leone excites me and keeps me going. more…

In 1986 the World Health Organisation held the first global conference on health promotion at which the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion was drafted and adopted. It has become the bible for health promoters with its five strategies of building healthy public policy, creating a supportive environment, strengthening community action, promoting individual skills and re-orienting health services. Today health promoters from around the world are gathering in Helsinki for the 8th conference on the theme of health in all policies. The deliberations this week in Helsinki will hopefully deepen the work of the commission on the social determinants of health (2008), and the political declarations issued from the Rio meeting on social determinants of health (2011), and the UN high level meeting on the prevention and control of non communicable diseases by determining how health can become a concern of all sectors. more…

Everybody knows that men think about sex every seven seconds. What people haven’t perhaps considered is that means more than 8000 times a day or 56 000 times a week. Despite the joke that if men only think about sex every seven seconds what on earth do they think about the rest of the time, that’s a lot of mental energy devoted to sex. The selfish gene may demand that we reproduce, but 8000 thoughts a day on sex is surely excessive. (But then again the average ejaculate contains around 300 million sperm, which seems even more excessive.) So can it be true that men think about sex 8000 times a day? more…

In January this year a hospital pharmacist contacted us after a colleague had questioned a prescription for amlodipine 10 mg four times a day for migraine.  She contacted the prescriber, who said he had got the dose from this clinical review  about pharmacological prevention of migraine published in The BMJ. more…