Tag Archive | Public Health
Social Peer Review: The IJMI Breaks New Ground
With an innovative move to have open peer review of submissions to the IJMI on the G+ community (closed and available only to the members of the group, who are invited by the Moderator/Editor of the Group), they have broken new ground. Now open peer review is nothing new. The BMJ has, amongst many other […]
PeerJ Calls for Papers: Disruptive Innovation in Open Access
I have been very excited about PeerJ ever since Peter Binfield took up the challenge of bringing down the costs of publication in an online, open access environment a few months ago. I wrote about it, expressed my skepticism at the “starting at 99$” tag, but nonetheless, was fascinated by the audacious claim of bringing […]
World Toilet Day: Give A Shit
Happy World Toilet day. As a dear friend reminded me today, it is the day the World Toilet Organization has earmarked for spreading awareness about the lack of proper sanitation and potable water which is killing a large number of people (someone on a poster contended the number was 1600!) everyday the world over. The […]
Talking to the Streets for Health: Street Theater as a Public Health Tool
Prior to coming to Delhi, I did not have much exposure to the power of the theater as a mode of dissemination of public health messages. It does sound strange when I put it that way because Kolkata, where I hail from, is a city with a vibrant theater culture. However, I just never got […]
Banning Gutkha: Paternalism in Public Health or Pro-Active Advocacy?
I have been meaning to write about this matter for a few days now, just never managed to make time for it. There has been a huge hue and cry over the banning of gutkha in certain states of India. While the public health professionals have more or less welcomed the move, the smokeless tobacco […]
Communicating Correctly: A Community Based Communication Exercise
The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wideFor his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,Turning again toward childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange eventful history,Is second childishness and mere oblivion,Sans […]
Indo-Pak Medical Students Romance the Border: A JPMS Initiative
From the press release of the Journal of Pakistan Medical Students, an endeavor worth the accolades: A Peace Initiative: A Group of Young Researchers And Doctors of India and Pakistan bridges the Divide KARACHI: The idea of publishing a medical research journal had been sparkling in the minds of many young researchers from India […]
TB or Not TB: World TB Day–No More TB
Today is the World Tuberculosis Day. It commemorates the day in 1882 when Robert Koch made the stunning announcement that he had been able to identify the causative agent for tuberculosis – the Tubercle bacilli. Tuberculosis is a disease that has dogged human beings from the earliest times. It has seen the rise and fall […]
Thoughts on World Cancer Day: Part II–Spreading the Word
Although I missed writing about this particular day of great public health interest on the day it actually took place, it was good to see the Indian corporates come up with an innovative way to celebrate this event. As I said in a previous post, this day needs more publicity because more and more cancers […]
Amit Gupta Needs Us!
Amit Gupta is an entrepreneur of Indian origin, based in USA, and has recently been diagnosed with Acute Leukemia. When he went to see his doctor for his continued loss of weight and weariness, he was handed a diagnosis of Acute Leukemia. He has started with his chemotherapy regime and is now slated to get […]
From Pakistan to China: A Country in Crisis and the Reemergence of Polio
In a rather disturbing article on their official website, WHO has come forward with some startling facts. Conventionally, polio has been endemic to four nations for the greater part of the past decade: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and of course, India. The last recorded polio case from China was in 1999. In the article dated 20th […]
MediQuiz #4: Incentivized PBL – A New Method of Interactive Clinical Problem Solving
I know I am supposed to put up the answer to MediQuiz #3 before I go on to post the next question, but it is past midnight and I am a little knackered to write up the post and do justice to it. Tomorrow, maybe. Procrastination, every medical student’s best friend… Anyways, this is a […]
Why the BMJ Should Not Follow NEJM Author Ban Policy
Fiona Godlee has written a very interesting Editorial in the BMJ and this tweet of hers made me think on this issue: For a while in the 90s NEJM banned editorials and reviews from authors linked to industry. Should the BMJ try this? http://bit.ly/rczXJt— fiona godlee (@fgodlee) August 11, 2011 I oppose the blanket ban […]
Aaron Swartz: The Robbing Hood of Open Access?
Let me make it clear at the very outset that I am aware that AS is being indicted for hacking by the federal government on charges of “wire fraud, computer fraud”, etc and not for downloading too many journal articles off JSTOR (4.8 million, to be precise). Here is what the prosecution had to say: […]
Move Over Penis Captivus, Cello Scrotum and Guitar Nipple, we have TEXTER’S THUMB!
The medical mind has pondered and pondered on the existence of maladies of the body and mind which are real, and sometimes, not so real. While the cynics say that the latter exist only in the realms of medical lore, us medical history nuts always beg to differ. A number of exotic diseases have sprung […]
Super-Bugs in Bugs and A Media Scare
This e-pub ahead of print has sent the media into a tizzy, and why would it not! Consider the power of this headline in your morning newspaper: Bed Bug: Cimex lectularius Image via Wikimedia. “FLESH EATING BACTERIA ISOLATED FROM BED BUGS” Now that the zombie apocalypse has failed, there must be some new fad to […]
CDC: Learning from TV Shows–Preventing the Zombie Apocalypse
So, there was this TV Show, The Walking Dead, which spoke of a Zombie Apocalypse befalling the earth, destroying most of human civilization. The show follows a group of survivors who try to find their way to survival. And, towards the end of the season that was airing, they go to the CDC and there […]
Buck-teria!
First up, a disclaimer. I know one of the researchers who conducted this short study personally and professionally. I admire their work and what they have done to further the cause of promoting research by medical students in India. So, this post may be a little biased, but anyways, I decided to go ahead with […]
Small Pox: Rumors, Superstitions and A Massive Scare
When I read this article, a sudden chill ran down my spine: The health secretary A K Sarkar told IANS he had heard the news that smallpox had resurfaced and the health department was in the process of authenticating reports. But he said he was not in a position to either confirm or deny the […]
Sex and the Senile
Geriatric sexuality is a very sparsely explored domain in the medical arena. With the developing world getting top heavy on the age pyramid, this has become a rather timely question to ask. This study conducted in Australia takes a look at the prevalence of sexual activities in people ages 75 years and above (upto 95 […]
inSPOT: Innovative Health Communication Technology
To be honest, you have to be in a spot of bother before you choose to use inSPOT but in our generation, it is a rather common issue to be addressed. Sexually transmitted disease. There now I am sure I got you attention… didn’t I? No? Then take a look at this: Ah. How’s that […]
Teenage Pregnancy: An Ethics Question
You-know! This post on Not House’s blog set me thinking about an ethically dicey question (Medical ethics has always been one of my pet peeves): Teenage Pregnancy and Consent. In this post, I am going to state an ethics issue, to which you may feel free to post your views/comments on (regarding the ethical implications […]
House MD and the professional guinea pig (via Humanities and Health)
A very interesting post with a poignant question to round it off: A must read for all concerned with health policies and the like. Whilst this post is not intended to be an answer to the question raised here, I must say that someday I intend to come back to it and write about it, […]
Death Drug on the Death Row
In the lethal injections used to execute prisoners on the death row, one of the major components is an important anesthetic drug called sodium thiopental. Under a three drug protocol, sodium thiopental is used to anaesthetise the prisoner, then pancuronium bromide paralyses him, before potassium chloride is administered to cause a fatal heart attack. (1) […]
Florbetapir: Making AD A Costlier Affair
The FDA has conditionally approved the novel contrast agent, Florbetapir, to help in the diagnosis of amyloid beta plaque build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s (or, for that purpose, any damn dementia) patients. Now there are several reasons why I am not over the moon with this, but I will come to them later. […]
Who Will Guard the Guardians?
In a grove of trees in the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, is a statue in memory of Albert Einstein. On it are engraved three of his sayings. One reads: “The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has […]
Tuskegee in Guatemala: Reblog from H&H
I stumbled across this blog from The Centre for the Humanities and Health at King’s College London, a Wellcome Trust-funded research centre in the Medical Humanities, which really caught my fancy. I liked several posts, and especially loved this one. habving read Susan Reverby’s draft paper, I must say I was a little shocked with […]
Rifaximin in IBS: A Quick Fix?
This study published in the NEJM seems to have tackled the really dicey issue of unearthing a pharmacotherapeutic agent to deal with the rather ubiquitous, though poorly understood, and more often than not, even less poorly managed problem of irritable bowel syndrome. The irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a functional gastrointestinal disorder characterized by recurring […]
Rapid Revision: ADHD
Epidemiology: One of the commonest psychiatric affliction of the school going population. It is thrice as common in boys The characteristic features are: Age inappropriate hyperactivity Impulsiveness Inattention Classification: Class I: Hyperactivity, Impulsiveness and Inattention all three are present Class II: Hyperactivity and Impulsiveness present only ClassIII: Only Inattention present. It is the least common […]
