The Fight Against Fake Drugs

Obama Success, or Global Shame?

"Since violent clashes in 2012, the Rohingya have been confined to quasi-concentration camps or to their villages, denied ready access to markets, jobs or hospitals. This spring, the authorities expelled the aid group Doctors Without Borders, which had been providing the Rohingya with medical care. Orchestrated violent attacks on the offices of humanitarian organizations drove many aid workers away as well and seemed intended in part to remove foreign witnesses to this ethnic cleansing."

Court in Thailand Limits Crackdown on Protesters

Rough Guide to Cambodia: Things Not to Miss

Rough Guide to Laos: Things Not to Miss

Rough Guide to Thailand: Things Not to Miss

A CONTROVERSIAL OASIS OF HEALTH CARE

"The center is largely funded by private donations, with additional support from the Sudanese government, which has committed two and a half million dollars a year. The organization estimates that, with its current infrastructure, a single valve replacement costs two thousand dollars, half of that being the cost of the valve itself; in the United States, the surgery could cost upward of thirty thousand dollars. Still, Sudan’s total per-capita expenditure on health in 2011 was less than two hundred dollars. On a continent where nearly fifty per cent of deaths in children under five are attributable to malnutrition and thirty per cent are preventable with vaccines, the argument for directing efforts toward improved primary care, rather than expensive specialized surgery, is compelling. One of the facility’s critics is Fred Cobey, an anesthesiologist at Tufts Medical Center, who worked at the Salam Centre for three months in 2010. 'Millions and millions of dollars have been poured into this place,' he told me. 'Even after working there, I still feel the money could be better spent elsewhere, like on basic health services. You saw how poor the surrounding area is; people have nothing.' The official position of the World Heart Federation is that surgery for rheumatic heart disease is 'a drain on the limited health resources of poor countries.'"

Ten Social Enterprises that are Changing the World in 2014

What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

 

"Today, more than one in five American children live in poverty. How, if at all, to intervene is almost invariably a politically fraught question. Scientists interested in the link between poverty and mental health, however, often face a more fundamental problem: a relative dearth of experiments that test and compare potential interventions."

Medical scribes

This would make clinic more efficient.

My first surgery:

Open repair of hernia

Where is the love?

Bill Gates can't build a toilet

Pictures of Typhoon Haiyan's Wrath

Growing clamor about inequities of the climate crisis

Aerial Views of Devastation in the Philippines

When doctors tell patients what they don't want to hear - Lisa Rosenbaum

Slow Ideas - Atul Gawande

"So what were the key differences? First, one combatted a visible and immediate problem (pain); the other combatted an invisible problem (germs) whose effects wouldn’t be manifest until well after the operation. Second, although both made life better for patients, only one made life better for doctors. Anesthesia changed surgery from a brutal, time-pressured assault on a shrieking patient to a quiet, considered procedure. Listerism, by contrast, required the operator to work in a shower of carbolic acid. Even low dilutions burned the surgeons’ hands. You can imagine why Lister’s crusade might have been a tough sell."

Why Boston's Hospitals Were Ready

"What prepared us? Ten years of war have brought details of attacks like these to our towns through news, images, and the soldiers who saw and encountered them. Almost every hospital has a surgeon or nurse or medic with battlefield experience, sometimes several. Many also had trauma personnel who deployed to Haiti after the earthquake, Banda Aceh after the tsunami, and elsewhere. Disaster response has become an area of wide interest and study."

The Doctor's Bag for the New Millenium

Redefining Medicine with Apps and iPads 

Women Developers Build Mobile Safety Apps - Forbes