So whose Plan is it anyway?
The last twelve months has seen the emergence of a new ‘post-2015’ Global Strategy for TB – one that’s intended to be rolled out over the next twenty years in the hope of seeing the ‘end’ of this pandemic. Back in June 2013 a high level panel established by the Secretary General of the UN submitted its report to the WHO. It contained its own recommendations for this new plan for TB and the principle of universal health coverage was definitely included within them. Amongst oth
What Global Emergency exactly?
In a few days’ time the WHO will publish its annual Global Tuberculosis Report. You may find some reference made to it in the media. If you do, then what you'll read about it will most probably reflect a press release crafted by the WHO, the organisation which has the unenviable responsibility of trying bring this disease under control. What you read will also probably depend on where you live because, despite tuberculosis being a truly immense humanitarian problem, astonishi
The ‘Duke’ and the secondary stories behind this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine
Duke Ellington was once asked what his favourite type of music was. “There are only two types of music”, he replied, “either good music and bad music”. And the same can surely be said of medicine. The Nobel Award This week an elderly and very modest Chinese researcher called Dr Tu Youyou has been belatedly co-awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for her meticulous research into the anti-malarial drug Artemisinin. This is a drug that has been subsequently hailed as the most im
