In 2011 Nathan Sivagananathan and Sarinda Unamboowe set out to transform the lives of patients with cancer in the northern region of Sri Lanka. For over three decades the northern […]
Global health
Gavin Yamey: Soldiers, academics, and an unusual health initiative
It’s not every day that you find yourself at a work meeting chatting to a soldier who led the Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team in Afghanistan and the doctor who […]
Simon Chapman: Why is Big Tobacco investing in e-cigarettes?
Discussion about e-cigarettes on social media, the blogosphere, and vaping chatrooms is dominated by impassioned accounts from former, now vaping, smokers wanting to encourage smokers to do what they have […]
Seye Abimbola and Aku Kwamie: Posting and transfer in the health sector
The things we don’t talk about in global health escape our attention perhaps because they don’t have a name—the unnamed subject being, in effect, […]
Richard Smith: NCD among the bottom billion
My main job these days means thinking about non-communicable disease (NCD) in low and middle income countries (LMIC), but a paper in the Lancet suggests that I may be thinking […]
Richard James: Snakes, boats, and muddy tracks—providing healthcare in Myanmar
I remember thinking that I finally understood what the phrase “hard to reach villages” actually means. After a full dawn-to-dusk boat journey the day before, myself, three Burmese colleagues, two […]
Faheem Ahmed: On the sideline or frontline—where should the British medical profession stand in times of armed conflict overseas?
Only days before his proposed release date, Abbas Khan was found dead in a government prison in Damascus. Arrested soon after his arrival in Syria, Dr Khan had initially planned […]
Helen M Nwaba on transforming the grassroots response to Nigeria’s HIV/AIDS epidemic
When a village in North Western Nigeria, which has one of the highest HIV rates in the state, is effectively cut off from other communities and the rest of the […]
Pat Harrold on why Ireland is forging ahead with plain packaging for cigarettes
We Irish are good at many things. We are world leaders in literature, music and, occasionally, rugby. Lately we have become famous for tobacco control. Ireland became the first country […]
Yueju Liu et al: The past and present of government funded healthcare in China
Yueju Liu,Yanling Su, Han Li, Juan Wang, and Yingze Zhang reflect on the past and present of government funded healthcare in China. Urban healthcare reform from 1949 to 1993 After […]