Worldcrunch
While Cuba has historically been praised for its health care system, the pandemic has struck the population hard, even those not infected. Among the victims are those suffering from psychological ailments whose prescriptions couldn’t be filled because of closed borders and economic crises.
Relatives of an 84-year-old said they left her at a clinic overnight after medics had refused to even look at a worsening leg infection. Who’s responsibility is it?
The official announcement came Thursday evening from European Union health officials, but it simply confirmed what we already knew: the AstraZeneca vaccine is safe. And most European countries will recommence distributing the jab, as the vaccination campaigns continue to be far slower than promised. For Guy Vallancien, a member of the French Academy of Medicine, […]
Imagine yourself as the first naturalist to stand in a place where little recorded scientific knowledge exists, like Alfred Russel Wallace in the Malay Archipelago or Alexander von Humboldt in the Americas in the early 1800s. The notes you record will expand humanity’s scientific knowledge of the natural world, and the specimens of plants and animals you collect are destined to be used for centuries to describe past and present biodiversity and make new discoveries in biomedicine and beyond. Now, imagine if those specimens were never collected. That’s what it’s like if samples from the field are not archived. Natural […]
Dismissed in much of the world as ‘charlatanism,’ homeopathic medicine, developed in the 18th century by Samuel Hahnemann, has long had a healthy following in his native Germany.
France is just one of many countries that have long shunned online consultations. But now that it’s skyrocketing in pandemic times, there may be a mini revolution in health care.
Even the region’s top hospitals were caught off guard by the pandemic. However, some proved adept at adapting and are looking at ways to better prepare for the next big crisis.
In the race to to find a cure, scientists are rushing to release their study results. There are dangers in skipping the standard peer-review procedures, but they may be outweighed by the benefits.
PARIS — It was only back in May that experts palmed off the 12-month goal post for a COVID-19 vaccine as wishful thinking. Now, with more than 140 candidate vaccines being developed, including three already in the final phase-3 trial, it seems we may be sprinting towards a new speed record in medical development. “The […]
At the heart of Beijing’s health diplomacy, traditional Chinese medicine accounts for nearly 30% of the Chinese pharmaceutical industry’s turnover, and anyone who criticizes it could be punished.
While it may make sense from a business perspective, healthcare facilities should focus on more than just optimizing space. Hospital architecture lessons from a pandemic.
Doctors still make house calls in the South American country. But more and more, health care services providers are urging patients to try ‘las videoconsultas.’
PARIS — With breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence promising to revolutionize all aspects of our lives, the field of medicine is far from immune. Radiology will be one of the first medical fields to be transformed by AI, French daily Les Echos reported earlier this month, with algorithms on the verge of being able to establish […]
Health and medicine were constant themes of the famed Colombian novelist. He also spent his life trying to understand how the human brain works, and why the memory breaks down…until he himself was afflicted by Alzheimer’s.
KABUL — In the crowded old city of the Afghan capital, dozens of shops are lined with piles of colourful dried herbs, sitting out in the open. Their fragrance wafts into the street. Hindu shopkeepers wear red, blue and black turbans, and have long, bushy beards. They tell they’ve been making and selling herbal medicine here for generations. Darmander Singh is a Hindu sage – a wise mystic. People here call him La La Dil Soz, which means ‘Kind big brother” in Persian. He sees more than 30 patients a week, asking them detailed questions about their body, before setting […]
PARIS — A series of major terrorist attacks since 2015 has changed life in France in big and small ways. Now it is about to change training requirements for French medical students. Beginning in September, every Faculty of Medicine in France must provide a training class for all of its students on how to treat […]
BEIJING — Authorities have carried out a series of raids on beauty salons in the Chinese capital in an effort to crack down on counterfeit Botox, The Beijing News reports. Botox is popular in China, where many young women aspire to have a thin V-shape face. But the high price of injections, which require regular […]
GENEVA — At the Geneva University Hospitals, pneumologist Jean-Paul Janssens receives patients suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). This rare disease is caused by the degeneration of motor neurons and kills patients within a few years. It is incurable. And yet patients often receive invitations from private clinics or doctors promising a miracle cure using […]
More and more Japanese, South Korean and other foreign manufacturers of TCM are not even using Chinese raw materials for the ancient cures. What is left then?
Swedish hospitals are a model for a more natural, less clinical approach to caring for newborn and premature babies.
For some students, summer is a time to rest; for others, a time to work. But for a growing number of China’s female youth, the summer break is a chance to go under the knife. According to a report last week in China News, plastic surgery for Chinese women has begun to spread from the […]
ALESSANDRIA — A small portable tool developed in Italy now allows doctors to treat patients with heart conditions in remote areas that don’t have access to medical facilities. A 27-year-old doctor, Alessandro Faragli, and his colleague, Edoardo La Porta, a nephrologist, created the imaging device known as Impedance App. The device measures bio-impedance or how […]
People who seek therapies to boost their health and outlook often experiment with a number of different methods, either simultaneously or in quick succession, hurting their chances for improvement.
Japan has become a leader in developing technology to aid not just elderly or otherwise limited people conduct everyday chores but also for the medical, defense and aviation industries in a country with a shrinking work force.
In the faraway verdant landscape of Easter Island, isolated in the Pacific Ocean, lives a rare type of bacteria that could be the key to curing a host of debilitating illnesses. Rapamycin, named for what the indigenous call the island it is found on — Rapa Nui — is used to produce an antibiotic named […]
The supply crisis that has plagued supermarkets and consumers for months now has hit the health care sector, with medicines, doctors and even emergency care in short supply. Plummeting oil prices are a major factor, as is the legacy of Hugo Chavez.
Though homophobia is not itself a mental illness, a new study finds that people who are prejudiced against gays and lesbians often do have mental disorders. But it’s unclear what we’re supposed to do with this insight.
TURKEY AIRSPACE VIOLATION AN “ERROR,” RUSSIA CLAIMS The violation of the Turkish airspace by a Russian warplane over the weekend was a “navigation error,” Moscow has told Ankara, according to Turkish military sources quoted by Hürriyet. Two Turkish F-16 jets intercepted a Russian SU-30 hundreds of meters into Turkey’s airspace, near the Syrian border, for […]
Rich in counterintuitive observations, the study of evolution is often misunderstood. We focus here on widespread ideas that happen to be patently false.
Amid controversial scenes of banned Western food being destroyed, Russia now faces criticism over proposed new import restrictions on life-saving medical equipment for the country’s most vulnerable.
-Analysis- PARIS — As pharmacists look to the future, the first thing they should bear in mind is that the health market is growing as it never has before. But it’s also just as true that consumer habits are changing. People are better informed, more demanding and more prone to self-medication. All of those are […]
Already more than 7,000 beds, Zhengzhou’s ‘Super Hospital’ now has plans to expand to serve 10,000. Is this the best approach to health care in a booming China?
Laughter in hospitals can actually help ease pain for patients, particularly children. Experts in the field, from doctors to red-nosed clowns, gathered in Florence to trade notes … and gags.
Latin America is the latest battlefield for the billions in the global showdown between smaller generic labels from the developing world and the major U.S. and European firms.
SAO PAULO — Vitamin D was named as such when it was first discovered in 1910, but it wasn’t until two decades later that its real structure was identified. In fact, it is a steroid hormone. Even today, the use of the term “vitamin” is a source of debate among health professionals. Vitamin D deficiency […]
While much of the West has seen the danger in abusing psychoactive drugs such as Valium, sales of these drugs in Brazil are skyrocketing, and doctors warn that it’s out of control.
GAZIANTEP — Syrian university students unable to complete their degrees due to the country’s ongoing conflict and displaced to Turkey are now jobless, or scraping by as day laborers. Fares, a 29-year-old from Kfar Nabal in the Idlib province, was studying for his final university exams when the security situation in the country made traveling to campus impossible. After years in medical school, he had just completed his training at the Ibn Rashed Hospital in Aleppo. He planned to specialize in the cardiovascular system, but was forced to drop those plans when it became impossible to travel to Aleppo for […]
As demand for organ transplants skyrockets, a new artificial heart and other sophisticated prostheses are among the medical-tech advancements raising troubling questions.
MBANDAKA — Don’t tell Mfutu Etawale Ratis he’s a magician or a witch doctor. The self-proclaimed traditional practitioner says he can cure mental illness. And in this northwestern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where modern treatments are often missing, Ratis is one of the only people trying to help patients with mental disorders. […]
“Here you have a stevia, that’s for diabetes,” says Téodora, a sun-weathered snippet of a woman of around 50, proudly beginning a tour of her medicinal plant nursery. She points out the Paraguayan lemongrass, for nerves; and a plant with little purple flowers, called “forever alive”, which is excellent for the heart.” All told, her […]