We are now launching the 2018/19 competition for students and interns. Write up your experiences as a global health case report and you could be the winner of a position as a Global Health Associate Editor for BMJ Case Reports. All authors must be students or interns at the time of submission. Your entry will […]
Category: Student editor
Making a Difference Through Advocacy
By Nathan Douthit At the annual meeting for the Consortium of Universities for Global Health this year, the theme was Health Disparities: A Time for Action. The keynote address was delivered by Stephen Lewis, former UN special envoy for HIV/AIDS, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN, humanitarian and broadcaster. He spoke about, “The drama of disparities,” […]
Making a Difference in Conflict Zones
By Nathan Douthit Large-scale destruction of health services is a feature of modern warfare which today tends to be intrastate (civil war) rather than interstate. Whereas at the time of the World War I 90% of the injured were combatants, by the end of the last century 90% of casualties were civilian. The demand on in-country health […]
Making a difference in the developing world
By Marcus Chong In 2016, while conducting medical research in a rural village of Northern Samar, the Philippines, Professor Allen Ross and his global health research team met a patient with severe electrical burns. He was a construction worker who had suffered an electrical burn at work from an overhanging high voltage electrical wire carrying […]
Self-medication and access to care in Global Health
By Nathan Douthit I am a local village doctor. I came to the eye hospital escorted by two people in view of my severe eye condition and blindness. Fortunately, I was immediately relieved of my symptoms and my vision was restored after treatment. I am now completely aware of the ill effects of using home […]
Cultural Competence in Global Health
By Nathan Douthit [I]n the…aim to produce cultural competence, one dimension to be avoided is… narrowly defining competence… in its traditional sense: an easily demonstrable mastery of a finite body of knowledge. Rather, cultural competence…is best described… as a commitment and active engagement in a lifelong process that individuals enter into on an ongoing basis […]
Stigma as a Barrier to Global Health Care
By Nathan Douthit “People who are excluded…are not ‘just like’ the rest of the poor, only poorer. They are also disadvantaged by who they are or where they live, and as a result, are locked out of the benefits of development.”[1] In ‘HIV-associated dementia in the Dominican Republic: a consequence of stigma, domestic abuse and […]
Use of Telemedicine to Deliver Global Medical Care
By Nathan Douthit Telemedicine is an important developing field for global health. Its use has been endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO), Medecins Sans Frontieres and multiple other national health services and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Telemedicine has multiple definitions, but the one endorsed by the WHO is: “The delivery of health care services, where […]
Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Their Effect on Global Health
By Nathan Douthit According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is on the rise. The US National Institute of Health defines complementary medicine as non-mainstream, non-western practice used together with conventional medicine, whereas alternative medicine is defined as the same used instead of conventional medicine. The WHO […]
Taking Care of Vulnerable Populations as Global Health – Case Reports on Refugees and Migrants
By Nathan Douthit According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a refugee is someone who,” owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, […]