Category: School of Public Health

Universal Health Coverage in the United Kingdom: past, present and future

NHS staff with a patient at Charing Cross Hospital
NHS staff with a patient at Charing Cross Hospital

On World Health Day, Professor Azeem Majeed takes a look at the past, present and future of the NHS.

In 2018, the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) celebrates its 70th anniversary. With the creation of the NHS in 1948, universal health coverage was finally implemented in the United Kingdom, with the NHS replacing the previous patchy health coverage schemes that had left many people with limited access to health services. All residents of the United Kingdom were given the right to register with a general practitioner, who was responsible for both providing primary care services and organizing referrals for specialist care. (more…)

Updating parents on neonatal units: “You can also log in to the app!”

parents with babies in neonatal care

Dr Susanna Sakonidou writes on how the BUDS project is improving the experience for parents of babies in neonatal care with an app.

Alarms going off, doctors and nurses rushing across the ward, parents desperately trying to catch someone’s eye to get an update. The reality of having babies in neonatal care is undoubtedly traumatic for parents. As high as 35% of them can develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (1), which can in turn interfere with the process of baby-parent bonding (2).

Having a baby that requires neonatal care is more common than one might think. One in eight babies born in the UK are admitted to a neonatal unit and surveys show that parents struggle to adjust to this unfamiliar environment. Getting verbal updates about their babies is difficult, given how busy staff is dealing with emergencies on the unit. As a result, parents frequently feel excluded from their babies’ care. (more…)

World AIDS Day: Dr Katharina Hauck on the health economics of fighting HIV

Katharina Hauck speaking at the Annual Meeting 2017 of the World Economic Forum in Davos (Copyright by World Economic Forum / Sikarin Thanachaiary)

To mark World AIDS Day 2017, we have published a series of blog posts to highlight the important and varied research that takes places at Imperial. Three experts from Faculty of Medicine share their interest in HIV/AIDS which spans from the elusive vaccine to the economics of the epidemic.

World AIDS Day takes place annually on 1 December as an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV and to show support for people living with HIV/AIDS.

The role of an economist in the HIV epidemic

As an economist, my research on HIV takes a higher-level population view. We advise policy makers in governments and international organisations on the cost-effectiveness of preventive and treatment interventions in the countries most ravaged by HIV. By estimating the benefits and costs of interventions, we can identify the ones that promise greatest improvements in population health. (more…)

Give HIV the Finger – National HIV Testing Week 2017

HIV testing week

In this post, GP Dr Richard Ma, provides a lowdown on HIV testing and how increasing testing rates is the answer to ending the HIV epidemic. 

It is the time of year again for HIV Testing Week!

Coordinated by HIV Prevention England (HPE) since 2012, National HIV Testing week has focused on three main aims:

  • improving awareness of HIV testing, particularly among communities at high-risk
  • increasing opportunities to take the test in clinics and other community settings
  • reducing the number of people diagnosed with HIV at a late stage

This year’s theme is ‘Give HIV the Finger’ – a cheeky reference to the free finger-prick test that people can receive by post, to provide a blood sample for testing without attending a clinic. (more…)

World Polio Day: edging closer to eradication

As we mark the fifth annual World Polio Day, Dr Edward Parker talks about Imperial’s research supports the polio eradication initiative in a number of ways.

Imagine you are running a marathon. You have reached the final mile of a long and arduous journey. You turn the last corner expecting to see the finish line, and instead you see a huge vertical ascent. The finish line is waiting at the top, hundreds of metres above you.

Such is the plight of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. In 1988, the year the initiative was launched, polio paralysed an estimated 350,000 people worldwide – roughly 1,000 each day. Over the last three decades, a globally coordinated vaccination campaign has fought the disease back to a few remaining refuges in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. In 2017, wild poliovirus has caused just 12 cases so far. (more…)

World Rabies Day: Why vaccinating man’s best friend is man’s best hope

rabies vaccine

Today is World Rabies Day. Christl Donnelly explains why giving rabies vaccinations is the path to global eradication by 2030. 

The goal of this global day is enhanced awareness spurring further efforts to prevent rabies, a viral disease that kills tens of thousands of people each year mainly in Asia and Africa. Two years ago, international organisations – including the World Health Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health – agreed to an ambitious, but achievable common goal: to end human deaths due to canine rabies by 2030. In fact, ‘Rabies: Zero by 30’ is the theme of the 2017 World Rabies Day. (more…)

World Water Week: Tackling a neglected health crisis

schistosomiasis

For World Water Week, Dr Anna Phillips from the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative explains clean water is crucial to the elimination of schistosomiasis.

Can you imagine life without access to clean water? Unfortunately for 663 million people this is a reality. That’s nearly one in ten people worldwide living without a safe water supply close to home, spending hours queuing or trekking to distant sources and coping with the health impacts of using contaminated water. SIWI’s (Stockholm International Water Institute) World Water Week, is a pertinent time to reflect on important research carried out by the Schistosomiasis Control Initiative (SCI), a non-profit initiative based at Imperial College London, which highlights why access to clean water is so important to human health. (more…)

Why study frogs in the School of Public Health?

Rhacophorus moltrechti – a species of frog endemic to Taiwan. Photographed by Lin Chun-Fu.

Jennifer Shelton from the School of Public Health reflects on a recent field trip to Taiwan which involved studying amphibians.

Close your eyes and imagine the high-pitched shrieking of cicadas unified in a crescendo of noise from the treeline. Fireflies blinking their fluorescence through the undergrowth. Bats swooping silently overhead, rustling your hair with their wing beats. Trekking across steep hillsides of wasabi plants during a rainstorm. Not the average working week of a researcher in the School of Public Health, but just some of the sights and sounds I was fortunate to experience when I visited Taiwan in May as a National Geographic Young Explorer. (more…)

Ten minutes in Beirut: the harsh struggle for health and life facing Middle-Eastern refugees

Beirut, Lebanon

For World Refugee Day, Dr Mohammed Jawad offers a unique insight into the refugee crisis from his secondment at the American University of Beirut.

20 June is World Refugee Day, and my short morning walk to the American University of Beirut (AUB) provides a daily and grim taste of the global refugee crisis. At 8:50am I take a right out of my Beirut flat onto a bustling and polluted Lebanese street. I live opposite a cheap hotel that hosts medical tourists – Iraqis, mainly – due to crippling of health systems in the region. A quick glance to my left and I’ll see two women outside a supermarket holding babies and pleading with ingoing shoppers for a small bottle of milk. To my right I see a large but flattened cardboard box, knowing this will soon become the cushion for a young mother and her two children. I’ll see them on my way home and I’ll worry about the toddler, who looks thin and tends to wander into the road. (more…)