A recent Mail and Guardian article reported the dramatic decline in Rwanda’s neonatal mortality rate. A video documentary in the article features Nyamata Hospital, where I have been working as […]
Month: June 2018
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Circle squarers and St Vitus
As I discussed last week, pi (π) is a transcendental number, 3.1415926535…, whose decimal expansion never ends. It is therefore impossible to do what ancient mathematicians were keen to do, […]
Maternal mortality in low resource settings: are doctors part of the solution or the problem?
Progress on reducing maternal mortality in Uganda remains “stagnant’” despite substantial on-going international (and UK) investment. Figures from the WHO indicate a maternal mortality ratio (MMR) of 343 deaths per […]
Jennifer Crane: Whose needs? Histories of “need” in the National Health Service
After 5,500 votes, 23% of BMJ readers have stated that the “greatest achievement” of the NHS is that it is “based on need.” This concept is a historic one, embedded […]
Anya de Iongh and Cat Chatfield: #BetterHealthDebate—getting the fundamental relationships right
Joining forces with the Health Foundation, we hosted a Twitter chat last month on how we meaningfully partner with patients to improve healthcare. The chat marked the launch of the BMJ’s Quality […]
Kailash Chand: We need bold action on childhood obesity
The UK government’s new childhood obesity strategy, which aims to halve childhood obesity by 2030, does not go far enough and lacks any firm commitment. The strategy proposes banning the […]
Unreported clinical trial of the week: Pyridoxine/doxylamine for nausea and vomiting of pregnancy in pregnant adolescents (NCT02045901)
Nick DeVito, Navindra Persaud, Ben Goldacre Background The US FDA Amendments Act (FDAAA 2007) requires certain clinical trials to report their results onto ClinicalTrials.gov within one year of completion. Our FDAAA […]
Time and pharmacist support in general practice are needed to improve medicines optimisation
More time and pharmacist support in general practice would reduce medication errors […]
Richard Smith: Revisiting “Stalinism in the NHS”
The appalling story of some 600 patients in Gosport Hospital being casually killed and the failure of every authority to take action makes me remember something that I wrote in […]
Patients or families raising the alarm are vital voices who must be heard, not problems or issues to be managed
The Gosport report gives us a clear vision of where the NHS needs to get to focus on patient safety and support openness and learning […]