Tag: Global health

TB or not TB? Why tuberculosis remains one of the top 10 causes of death today

Tuberculosis

PhD student Dr Ishita Marwah writes about her personal take on tuberculosis – a disease that continues to be a global issue.

I was always a sickly child – when I was eleven years old, doctors injected my forearm with tuberculin in order to check whether my immune system raised a response to the bits and bobs of dead tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in it. If it did, it meant my immune system had already been prodded into battling TB, that is, it had previously encountered or was currently encountering an infection with TB bacteria. The injection site swelled like a furious bee sting, the doctors decided TB was the root cause of all my troubles, and I was intensely medicated for the next six months. My symptoms improved, and I have since evolved (visibly even!) towards the hale and hearty end of the healthiness spectrum. (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…)