Lassa fever is a deadly viral hemorrhagic disease in the same broad family as Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), Dengue and Yellow fever. Lassa fever causes an acute febrile illness, with bleeding and death in severe cases. Lassa fever was first described in Nigeria 1969 in Lassa Town, Borno State, from where the disease derived its […]
Read More… from A view from the front lines of Nigeria’s Lassa Fever outbreak
Sammy Margo says she would rather be a stiffy. When a patient walks into my clinic for the first time, I tend to automatically clock them as either a ‘stiffy’ or a ‘bendy’. It makes a difference to the way I treat them. Everyone falls somewhere on the stiffy/bendy scale and women are more likely […]
Now that I am reaching a certain seniority in terms of age, I am aware that there will come a time when self-regulation falters. This is the process expected of us when dealing with our personal affairs. From childhood onwards we are encouraged to develop personal responsibility and this is complicit with mature adulthood. But […]
Read More… from Self-regulation in later life. Doctors get old too!
MATTU, the UK’s first International Centre of Telemedicine based at Surrey University and the Royal Surrey County Hospital, has telementoring facilities that links to hospitals and research centres all over the world. A advanced operating theatre allows key-hole specialist surgeons to coach people from as far afield as China, the East Coast of America and […]
Read More… from Telementoring in surgery is a global revolution
Most people know that I am a vociferous campaigner against added sugar in our diet. I have been arguing for a sugar tax to be levied on food and beverage companies that lavish their products with refined sugar, and put our health at risk. I strongly believe that added sugar is a leading cause of […]
Read More… from Why I want to drop dead healthy – and I probably will
Is vaping the solution for smokers who want to quit? We know that many people have successfully used e-cigarettes to quit smoking. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency recently awarded a licence to allow the e-Voke brand to be marketed as a smoking cessation aid – the first time an e-cigarette has received such […]
“Smoking” of e-cigarettes results in the evaporation of so-called liquids, which represent solutions of certain ingredients. The liquid is heated by means of a battery-operated mechanism, which allows to inhale the vapour. The users of e-cigarettes can either replace the liquid-filled cartridges or refill them by their own. Little is known about the ingredients of the liquids. The Federal Institute […]
Read More… from Liquids from e-cigarettes can be detrimental to health
Why we need to start talking about doubt in medical school. In recent weeks, in the aftermath of Jeremy Hunt’s decision to force through new contracts on junior doctors, an oft hidden subsection of medics has come to the fore, namely ‘the doubters’. Hidden behind the cries of the devoted, who would move all the […]
Two major military campaigns came to an end in the last decade. In 2006, British forces pulled out of Iraq and Britain’s 13-year peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan finished in 2014. But the end of hostilities does not always mean that the men and women who took part can draw a line under their experiences. In around […]
Read More… from The war is over… now the battle against combat stress begins
One in six people in the UK are deaf or hard of hearing and the majority are older people who develop hearing loss as a normal part of the ageing process. According to the charity, Action on Hearing Loss, about two million people in the UK have hearing aids, but only 1.4 million use them […]