I have recently been reading a memoir by a British lady, of Pakistan origin, who undertakes a position as a medical doctor at a hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The book is beautifully formatted, with a cover decorated in Islamic art and design, with each chapter laid out to chronicle another adventure in Dr Ahmed’s […]
Category: Global Health
The Landscape of Lesotho
Lesotho is one of the highest countries and is entirely landlocked by South Africa. 40% of Lesotho’s population survives on less than $1.25 a day. In centuries gone by, the people of Lesotho were driven high up into the mountains by the Xhosa and Zulu people and have repeated a solitary and isolated life, mainly […]
Believing Without Seeing
Esref Armagan was born blind in Ankara, Turkey. He has now become a famous artist due to his sheer talent and also due to certain significant and unusual reasons. His art displays the colour, vividness, light, dark, imagination and perspective that we are used to considering as the gifts of sight. Esref is changing the […]
In Sickness and In Health
Crossing borders always presents the potential for a hold-up. When I prepared to cross the border from Macedonia (or Skopje if you are Greek), into the tiny nation of Kosovo, preparation was the key. I had one mission:to visit the hospital in the capital, Pristina. […]
Establishing a Medical Humanities in Nepal with the help of a FAIMER Fellowship by Ravi Shankar
In this guest posting, Dr Ravi Shankar tells us how a FAIMAR Fellowship help him to develop and deliver a medical humanities curriculum in Nepal. Ravi writes… Dr. Badyal, my good friend during my postgraduate residency e-mailed me in late January 2007 informing about a FAIMER fellowship in South Asia. At that time my knowledge and […]
Where Medicine Tells a Story …
Across many African traditions, children are taught to repeat the names of their ancestors as far back as the mind can remember. These children will not have a sense of time in the way that time dictates the movements of every possible action in the West. Instead, the legacy of their ancestors seeps into their play […]
Arts and humanities: a neglected aspect of education in South Asia
In this posting, Nepalese medical educator and MH Editorial Advisory Board Member, Ravi Shankar, describes the educational background of students entering medical school in South Asia. […]