Category: Health
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Sociological Observations on the UK’s Vaccine Role-Out
The UK has vaccinated more people (proportionate to population) than any other country: This is probably due to a combination of the following: A successful ‘social policy’ initiative by the UK government – a sustained focus on getting as many people as possible vaccinated in as short a time as possible and the funding to…
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Strategies for Improving Health in Developing Countries
These obviously stem from people’s theories about what the ‘causes’ of poor health are. Long term economic growth The first and probably most important point is that there is a broad, if not perfect, correlation between a country’s per capita income and its levels of health, as measured by life expectancy, infant mortality, overall death…
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Theories of Development applied to Health
As a genera rule, people in developing countries suffer from poorer health than people in developed countries – with higher rates of deaths from preventable causes resulting in higher child mortality rates and lower life expectancies. Theories of development aim to explain why this is the case and what the most effective solutions to improving…
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Sociological Perspectives on the Coronavirus
The UK government today declared that the Coronavirus was a ‘serious and imminent threat to public health‘. This certainly seems to be justified as the number of UK confirmed cases has recently doubled from 4 to 8, and the virus does seem to spreading in South East Asia and beyond. There’s no doubt this virus…
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Coronavirus – like the Borg but worse, apparently!
The World Health Organisation is meeting today to decide whether the Coronavirus constitutes an international global health emergency. The first human case of the virus was found in the Chinese city of Wuhan, but it has since spread beyond into other parts of China and internationally to other countries such as South Korea and Japan.…
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The challenges of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Ebola recently resurfaced in Democratic Republic of Congo, and has now infected more than 2500 people in the Eastern part of the country, near the border with Uganda. Ebola is one of the world’s most infectious and deadliest diseases: as of 22nd July 2019 the World Health Organisation reported 2503 cases in this latest outbreak,…
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What is the significance of the ‘increase’ in student suicides?
How doe we explain the recent increase in higher education student suicides? Are there any underlying causes, or is this just a ‘moral panic’?
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How do we explain the 500% increase in prescriptions for Cow’s Milk Allergy between 2006 to 2016?
In a recent BBC documentary: ‘The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs’ Dr Chris Van Tulleken (Dr CVT) set out to answer the above question. Here I summarise this documentary and throw in a few links and additional commentary You can watch the documentary on BBC iplayer until Late June 2018, although TBH you may as…
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Why are we relying more on drugs to treat teenagers’ mental ill-health?
we’re relying more on drugs to treat teenagers’ mental ill-health, but could we be giving out pills to thousands of teenagers which are not only ineffective but actually have severely dangerous side effects.
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Indicators of Health in International Development
Health is a crucial indicator of development – The International Aid community believe that health is the most important thing to spend money on – with around 90% of the aid budget being spent in this area. Four basic measurements of health in development It is possible to classify these indicators differently, but for the…
