As UK participants returned from last week’s European Health Forum in Gastein (read more), Austria, newspaper headlines calling for “Cuts in wasteful NHS bureaucracy” and “Pay freezes for high earners” will have reinforced the messages they heard. Debate focused on the impact of the financial crisis on health and what governments should do about it. While saving money by reducing waste in Europe’s” inefficient health systems” was one message, the central one was that health is largely determined by factors outside the health system, and that the rallying cry’s should be “social justice” and “jobs for health.” more…

Two years ago health ministers in the Czech Republic decided to focus on the financial sustainability of health systems during their six months at the EU presidency helm. Was this foresight? Did the ministers know what the bankers did not- that economic Armageddon was round the corner? Either way, the financial crisis was certainly concentrating minds at their recent conference on how countries can continue to meet their rising healthcare costs. more…

How far does your interest in global health stretch? Far enough to have forged a link between your hospital or practice and a similar one in a low income country? If the answer is no but the idea appeals log on to www.thet.org, the website of the Tropical Health and Education Trust, or THET as the charity prefers to be called. THET has been guiding and supporting long term, low budget, health links between health professionals in the UK and their counterparts in low income countries for 20 years. Last week it launched a new drive for support. It chose a good launch venue. more…

In Washington’s elegant Union station Barack Obama’s face shines out from the newspaper stacks and the shops in the concourse are bristling with OB merchandise. I pass on the fridge magnets but I’m tempted by the T-shirts, many of which carry the words “change” and “hope” alongside his smiling portrait. Optimism is in the air as I make my way via metro to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Security on this 300 acre campus, which encloses 27 different research institutes, is tight, and the perimeter fence forbidding – legacies of 9/11. more…

Sarah Palin may have raised the profile of female politicians, but I’m lifting my glass to the girls who saw me through surgery last week. I did spot the odd male among the panoply of health professionals who looked after me, but they were thin on the ground. From the consultant surgeon and anaesthetist to the kindly soul who sang as she emptied rubbish sacks, mine was a female dominated “hospital episode” and none the worse for it. more…

Start with Handel’s Alleluia chorus, include a fireworks display, lay on a dinner hosted by government, during which the director general of the WHO makes a cabaret style eulogy. Add addresses from global health gurus, contributions from European health ministers, a scattering of parallel sessions and you have the making of a notable conference. And so it proved to be. more…

” I believe that you do not measure the health of a society by GNP, but by the condition of its worst off. ”
Zygmunt Bauman

Equitable access to health care was the theme of this years meeting of the Global Forum of Health Research in Beijing and Margaret Chan, director general of WHO set the scene. more…

By 0900 on the 3 Oct the hills of the picturesque Gastein valley in Austria were alive with the sound of some 600 politicians, policy makers, academics, industry leaders, and  NGO’s, exchanging views on the future of health care in Europe. Eight hours earlier it had been silent and chilly, as three of us prowled around a dimly lit and firmly locked hotel. Fortunately my companions, who work in DG Sanco more…

“The older I get the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball the further I am rolled the more I gain” Susan Anthony (suffragist) 1890-1906.
On the airport bus en route to the conference I eavesdrop on a conversation which contains the words “patient” and “the NHS.” Emboldened, I accost my two travelling companions … only to find that they are heading to a meeting on spinal injury. more…