Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (BBBP), the flagship scheme of India’s ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), is trying to address a declining child sex ratio—919 females per thousand males in 2011—by […]
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Richard Smith: How might the NHS die?
“The NHS is under tremendous pressure,” I tell a novelist friend. “Could it die?” he asks. “I suppose it could.” “How would that happen?” How would it happen? That’s a […]
Paul Glasziou: Still no evidence for homeopathy
When the National Health and Medical Research Council report on homeopathy concluded that “There was no reliable evidence from research in humans that homeopathy was effective for treating the range […]
Billy Boland: Lessons from a Quality Improvement geek
I’ve become somewhat of a Quality Improvement #QI geek in the last year or so. Since first getting my head around the concept, I’m now an enthusiast and have witnessed […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—15 February 2016
NEJM 11 Feb 2016 Vol 374 The decline of Alzheimer’s 523 Let’s start off on a happy note, and think about dementia. On Saturday morning the BBC News website ran […]
Jeanne Lenzer: The Backstory—When is patient consent needed?
While I was reporting on a study for The BMJ, I suddenly felt as if I’d walked through Alice’s Looking Glass. You’ve possibly heard about the study by now: researchers […]
Richard Smith: Putting the H back into the NHS
The H in NHS stands not for hospital or healthcare but health, and the NHS needs to do better at promoting health, said Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A penicillin anniversary
Today, 12 February, is the 75th anniversary of the first clinical use of penicillin in Oxford in 1941 (picture). Image: A plaque commemorating the first administration of purified penicillin to […]
Miriam Saey Al-Rifai: Midwestern adventures into the mind
My induction was interrupted by a loud siren bellowing out across County Buchannan. My supervisor, consultant forensic psychiatrist, Dr Reynolds, ran me out of the hospital into the courtyard shouting […]
Saurabh Jha: Britain’s junior doctors are not apprentices
It was Boxing Day weekend. The consultant surgeon summoned the on-call team. “We face a calamity,” he said. The house officer had called in sick. The locum wasn’t going to […]