The past month has seen the reputation of “Big Pharma” dented more than usual. The CEO of German pharmaceutical company Bayer, Marijn Dekkers, was reported as saying that the company […]
MSF
Helen Bygrave: HIV viral load in Africa—no longer why but how?
Access to HIV viral load monitoring in resource poor settings has long felt a bit like the search for the Holy Grail—a seemingly hopeless, but essential quest. But at the […]
Tejshri Shah: Children and adolescents in conflict—survival alone is not enough
When I was asked to write about the research gaps in paediatric mental health research in conflict settings my first reaction was to shout about the unmet need in mental […]
Grania Brigden: TB patients take the stage—now for an R+D model that meets their needs
At last week’s Union World Conference on Lung Health, TB patients finally took centre stage, with patients invited to describe the realities of the two year treatment regimen for multidrug […]
Unni Karunakara and Jean-Christophe Dollé: The limits of humanitarian aid—MSF and TB in Somalia
On 14 August 2013, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) took one of the most difficult decisions in our history and closed all of our medical humanitarian aid operations in Somalia after […]
Sophie Reshamwalla: The bomb blast injury boys of Pakistan
My mobile rings. It is a nurse from the Emergency Room (ER): “Dr Sophie, we have a boy whose legs have come off. Please could you come to help?” I […]
Unni Karunakara: Médecins Sans Frontières’s decision to pull out of Somalia
Médecins Sans Frontières’s announcement on 14 August that we were closing all our medical programmes in Somalia sent shockwaves through political and humanitarian communities. It came at a time when world […]
Julien Potet: How access to life saving antisera is dwindling fast, and what to do about it
What do snakebites, tetanus, and rabies have in common? Answer: Treating patients with these life threatening conditions relies on antisera, a class of immunoglobulin-rich products derived from the plasma of […]
Leslie Shanks: To err is humanitarian
I remember that day as if it were yesterday. It was in the middle of the chaos of the cholera outbreak that followed the refugee influx into Zaire in 1994 […]
Juliet Dobson: MSF scientific day 2013—how can we measure the impact of research?
How can we measure the impact of research? What is impact, and how can we show that research leads to measurable outcomes for patients? On 10 May, Médecins Sans Frontières […]