Pablo Lavados: Improving stroke care in Chile
A profile of Pablo Lavados, a neurologist who established the PISCIS project (an epidemiological study examining the incidence of stroke in Iquique, a city in northern Chile) is freely available free in The Lancet Neurology. Excerpts are provided...
Preventing stroke: saving lives around the world
We propose a specific global goal for reduction of deaths from and burden of stroke as an advocacy tool to communicate the size and scope of the burden of disease that stroke represents worldwide...
Standard method for developing stroke registers in low-income and middle-income countries: Experiences from a feasibility study of a stepwise approach to stroke surveillance (STEPS Stroke)
STEPS Stroke can be used in diverse populations to provide data in a standardised manner in countries with little or no previous records of stroke. Future studies should concentrate on expansion beyond hospital case series by adding information for stroke patients treated outside the hospital, linked to census data for the source population from which the cases come...
Expanding priorities - Confronting chronic disease in countries with low income
Although there are many ways to classify diseases and to evaluate the burden of disease, it is clear that by any measure, several noncommunicable chronic diseases have a place in the global top 20...
Preventive polypill -- Much promise, insufficient evidence
Recently, as a way of overcoming these barriers, some observers have been advocating the concept of a "polypill" - a single pill that would include a number of key drugs...
What's making us sick is an epidemic of diagnoses
A recent article titled "What's making us sick is an epidemic of diagnoses" was called to our attention by Joaquin Barnoya, MD, ProCor contributing editor. The article's authors suggest that "For most Americans, the biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease. It's our health-care system" and identify an "epidemic of diagnoses" as the cause...
Essays from Young Voices in Research for Health
Two essays that focus on cardiovascular disease from the Young Voices in Research for Health contest in 2006...
‘I can't do any serious exercise': Barriers to physical activity amongst people of Pakistani and Indian origin with type 2 diabetes
In order to be effective, health messages and prevention programs must resonate with people's personal and cultural experiences. This study provides valuable insights into an at-risk population. South Asians in the UK are more than four times more likely to have Type 2 diabetes than the general population...
Low fruit and vegetable consumption
The study conducted in Iceland shows that a large proportion of the
fruit and vegetable intake of 11-year-old children can be explained by
environmental and personal factors. Environmental factors appear to be
more important for children s vegetable intake than for their fruit
intake...
Road less traveled: Four developing countries blaze new trails to better health
An article in the Fall 2006 issue of the Rand Review investigates factors at play in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, and Indonesia, four developing countries that throughout the 1990s reduced child mortality at rates exceeding what might be expected from their poor economic circumstances...
Cost of health-related brain drain to the WHO African Region
Developed countries continue to deprive African countries of billions of dollars worth of investments embodied in their human resources. If the current trend of poaching of scarce human resources for health...
The Lancet special issue: World Diabetes Day
The Lancet published a diabetes-focused issue to coincide with World Diabetes Day 2006...
Overweight in the Pacific: Links between foreign dependence, global food trade, and obesity in the Federated States of Micronesia
An article that explores the forces and factors that have made Micronesia one of the most obese countries in the world. The author emphasizes the importance of re-embracing cultural roots in order to return to health...
Lessons from a small country about the global obesity crisis
Developed countries had high obesity rates before the problem was taken seriously and hence the genesis must be seen in retrospect. Developing countries offer a clear view of causal factors but also opportunities for prevention, which must focus on both food and physical activity environments...
Health in Cuba
"Health in Cuba" examines Cuba's success in preventing cardiovascular disease despite limited economic resources and its potential contributions to the global health arena if not for current political alignments...
Modern ways open India's doors to diabetes
There are many ways to understand diabetes in this choking city of automakers and software companies, where the disease seems as commonplace as saris. One way is through the story of P. Ganam, 50, a proper woman reduced to fake gold...
Offering lifestyle advice is good clinical practice
Question-and-answer article on offering lifestyle advice reprinted from the September 2006 issue of DOC News...
Heart disease in Africa
The exact incidence of hypertension is not known, but the African Union has called hypertension one of the continent's greatest health challenges after AIDS...
Please Hold the Free Lunches
Doctors are deluding themselves when they say their medical judgment can't be influenced by something as trivial as a deli sandwich. When the sandwiches are delivered en masse for the entire medical staff, courtesy of drug companies that are touting their wares while the doctors eat, the physicians are swallowing a lot more than ham-and-cheese on rye. Otherwise, the drug companies would not be offering their lunchtime spreads...
Trans fatty acids and cardiovascular disease
The consumption of trans fatty acids from partially hydrogenated oils provides no apparent nutritional benefit and has considerable potential for harm. A 2 percent increase in energy intake from trans fatty acids is associated with a 23 percent increase in the incidence of coronary heart disease...
