On television we can often tell more from peoples’ words or reactions than from any scripted voiceover. In “Protecting our Parents”—a three part BBC 2 documentary, due to be screened […]
Year: 2014
The BMJ Today: Why does female genital mutilation persist?
A news story by Clare Dyer and a rapid response from the director of public prosecutions in England and Wales, Alison Saunders, keep The BMJ’s spotlight on female genital mutilation. […]
Kailash Chand: The survival of general practice is the survival of the NHS
General practice in England is under intense pressure at the moment from a variety of sources, including the plan to keep surgeries open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a […]
Candace Imison: The future provider landscape—are foundation trusts taking us down a dead end?
A year ago NHS commissioning was ripped up by its roots, divided up and then pushed back into the soil. Like the plants in my garden that get such rough […]
Nick Harvey: There’s now a cure for hepatitis C… but the poor can’t afford it
Picture the scenario: a disease is destroying your liver and there’s a chance you will die. There’s a cure, but you can’t have it as it costs more than you […]
The BMJ Today: GSK and paying doctors to speak on its behalf
On 17 December last year, UK pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, made a bold pledge. From 2016, the company said, it will stop paying doctors to speak on its behalf or to […]
Richard Hurley: Why the food industry doesn’t find a sugar tax so sweet
A flurry of media attention followed England’s Chief Medical Officer Sally Davies’s recent admission that a sugar tax may have to be considered to try to reverse the overweight and […]
Tessa Richards: “All I ask is that you listen”
If healthcare was a patient, the diagnosis would be multimorbidity. There is a near terminal mix of fragmentation of services, failure to listen and respond to patients concerns, lack of […]
Jen Gunter: The Tamiflu talisman
Oseltamivir (Tamiflu) has been prescribed for my son, Oliver, multiple times. It’s possible he has taken this drug more than anyone. Oliver was born at 26 weeks gestation and was […]
The BMJ Today: One way to tackle street drinking
The road in which I live connects a long, shady stretch of green space, with a few benches, and a rather grubby inner London high street that seems to have […]