Publications by authors named "Bhopal Raj"

Article Synopsis
  • Consensus statements are important in medicine and public health, but not all use solid evidence to support their claims.
  • Some statements rely on expert panels, which can be biased if many members share the same opinions or interests, especially without a thorough review of evidence.
  • A recent case about COVID-19 showed that many panel members had strong connections to groups pushing for strict COVID measures without revealing these biases, highlighting the need for clear conflicts of interest to ensure trustworthiness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: The occurrence of chronic heart and kidney diseases among the South Asian populations has been rising exponentially over the years. Research has been carried out in the past to explain the increased susceptibility with no resultant strong evidence. Various possible causes have been suggested with a previous hypothesis suggestive of high heat cooking techniques being responsible for increased production of neo-formed contaminants such as advanced glycation end products (AGEs) and trans-fatty acids (TFAs) leading to increased chronic heart diseases among the South Asian diaspora (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka in South Asia and overseas).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Comparison of COVID-19 trends in space and over time is essential to monitor the pandemic and to indirectly evaluate non-pharmacological policies aimed at reducing the burden of disease. Given the specific age- and sex- distribution of COVID-19 mortality, the underlying sex- and age-distribution of populations need to be accounted for. The aim of this paper is to present a method for monitoring trends of COVID-19 using adjusted mortality trend ratios (AMTRs).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

COVID-19 is pandemic, and likely to become endemic, possibly returning with greater virulence. Outlining potential public health actions, including hygiene measures, social distancing and face masks, and realistic future advances, this paper focuses on the consequences of taking no public health action; the role of natural changes such as weather; the adverse public health consequences of lockdowns; testing for surveillance and research purposes; testing to identify cases and contacts, including the role of antibody tests; the public health value of treatments; mobilising people who have recovered; population (a synonym for herd) immunity through vaccination and through natural infection; involving the entire population; and the need for public debate. Until there is a vaccine, population immunity is going to occur only from infection.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is pandemic. Prevention and control strategies require an improved understanding of SARS-CoV-2 dynamics. We did a rapid review of the literature on SARS-CoV-2 viral dynamics with a focus on infective dose.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The inaugural conference of the Global Society on Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Health COVID-19 examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on migrants and ethnic minorities and the role of racism. Migrants everywhere have faced tightening immigration restrictions, more obstacles to healthcare, increased racism and worsening poverty. Higher COVID-19 mortality rates have been otbserved in ethnic/racial minorities in the United Kingdom and the United States.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Public health professionals and clinicians, in many countries, are immersed in the ongoing and upcoming vaccination programmes for COVID-19. Published information from vaccine trials is complex. There are important and helpful insights about the nature of the available and forthcoming vaccines, immune responses and side-effects from phase II trials.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Mortality statistics on the COVID-19 pandemic have led to widespread concern and fear. To contextualise these data, we compared mortality related to COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic across seven countries in Europe with all and common causes of death, stratifying by age and sex. We also calculated deaths as a proportion of the population by age and sex.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need for consistent ethnicity data collection in healthcare, as current disparities have affected minority populations significantly.
  • The NHS Lothian's Ethnicity Coding Task Force aimed to increase the recording of ethnicity data from 3% to 90% over three years, achieving impressive completion rates of around 91% for inpatients, 85% for outpatients, and 93% for A&E visits.
  • Data analysis revealed diverse attendance patterns in A&E among ethnic minority groups, challenging the assumption that lower GP registrations lead to increased A&E use, while also demonstrating how effective data collection supports healthcare assessment and future planning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Cancer screening should be equitably accessed by all populations. Uptake of colorectal cancer screening was examined using the Scottish Health and Ethnicity Linkage Study that links the Scottish Census 2001 to health data by individual-level self-reported ethnicity and religion.

Setting: Data on 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF