Sunnyside up…
Friday 16 July 2010. AS I listened to Radio 4 Woman’s Hour on the way to work, I found myself increasingly incensed & talking to the airwaves. In the studio was a male travel medicine expert, a woman who loved the suntanned look, and another woman who was determined to be “pale & interesting”. The…
Health Literacy in action
This blog is contributed by Dr. Arthur Culbert, a member of the Global Health advisory board, and Executive Director of the non-profit organisation Health Literacy Missouri (HLM), USA. On May 27, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the National Action Plan to Improve Health Literacy. The long-awaited action plan is aimed…
Nanotechnology, Miracle or Menace?
This debut blog is contributed by our editorial intern Elizabeth Milway, an Oxford University graduate with a background in biochemstry & bionanotechnology. Recently wherever I turn nanotechnology keeps cropping up! At first I thought – maybe it’s one of those things where once you’ve noticed something you can’t stop noticing it, but then I did…
‘orrible things you find in your food
The other day, I purchased pork & apple burgers from the local farmers’ market. The first 3 went down a treat, shared between myself, my daughter and my husband. But suddenly in the 4th one, my husband discovered a squashed piece of metal. Knowing his history of cracked dental fillings I was all for persuading…
A personal choice: smoking tobacco or your kid’s health?
Staff at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital claimed in a BBC Panorama programme, (Spoilt Rotten? BBC One, Tuesday, 13 April ) that it was costing them over £1 million annually to treat preventable diseases in children. I picked up on this report via Radio 4: my ears pricked up as I had a pretty good…
Model building in Bournemouth saves lives
NO, not sandcastles, although if it could be said to improve your health then the 2010 annual meeting of UKPHA* (“Confronting the Public Health Crisis”) would have offered it in Bournemouth (alongside Nordic walking, Tai chi, handclapping exercises (I kid you not!) cycling and vegetarian food (see my colleague's blog Wot no conference bag?). NO what…
Repelling boarders…
Given a choice, faced with a malaria-carrying mosquito heading in your direction, would you opt for an insecticide that killed it before it reached you, or one that merely repelled it? Most of us would plump for the first option I am sure, and this is how insecticide treated bednets (ITNs) work and why they…
Rapid Diagnostic Tools – the End of Traditional Microscopic Diagnosis of Malaria?
Fig. 258. Plasmodium ovale. Three typical trophozoites that make species diagnosis very easyImage courtesy of the authors of Atlas of Human Malaria. From Zeno Bisoffi and Giovanni Swierczynski, of the Centre for Tropical Diseases, S. Cuore Hospital, in Negrar (Verona), Italy. At the recent ECTMIH 2009 in Verona, Italy, a very well attended parallel session…
Parasite anyone?
European Congress of Tropical Diseases/1st Mediterranean Travel Medicine meeting Monday Sept 7 2009 We are in Verona, home of Juliet & Romeo & apparently Pinocchio, if the street sellers are any indication. My companion is tucking warily into her first swordfish meal, a confirmed meat eater up until now. She remarks that her uncle had…
Artemisinin yields boosted
Artemisinin is currently the most effective drug we have against malaria, a disease which kills a child every 30 secs, and which we in Europe need to remember was only finally eliminated from Europe in the 1950’s….. and with climate change may well be back, and not just in travellers. Artemisinin works on the parasite and…