Glob Public Health
January 2024
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is often framed as a 'silent pandemic,' an invisible crisis unfolding beyond the public gaze. This unseen emergency narrative fuels policy responses aimed at re-establishing human control over antimicrobial use and benefits. In this commentary, we critique the reduction of AMR to a homogenising framework - a product of long-standing paradigms for disease control and elimination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCOVID-testing was central to control the spread of infection in Denmark. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, we show that testing was not just a diagnostic sign; it was also a biosocial practice that enacted a public health morality, centered on responsibility, care, and belonging. We argue that testing led to a public healthicization of everyday life, as it moralized individual and collective behavior and created a moral divide between the tested and the untested.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith an estimated two billion people being carriers of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI), the gains achieved by increasing access to diagnostics and treatment, although substantial, have had a modest impact on the global burden of tuberculosis (TB). At the same time, increased access to treatment has had the unintended consequence that drug-resistant TB (DR-TB) has increased dramatically. Earlier TB control strategies strongly emphasizing medical treatment have failed to address these issues effectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This trial evaluated the efficacy and safety of intravenous (IV) iron isomaltoside (Monofer) in comparison with placebo in first-time female blood donors.
Study Design And Methods: The trial was a prospective, double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized, comparative, single-center trial of 85 first-time female blood donors. The subjects were randomly assigned 1:1 to either 1000 mg IV iron isomaltoside infusion or placebo.
Background: Transfusion-associated circulatory overload is characterised by acute respiratory distress, tachycardia, increased blood pressure, acute pulmonary oedema and/or evidence of positive fluid balance occurring within 6 hours after transfusion. Transfusion-associated circulatory overload is a serious, underreported reaction, which makes this iatrogenic condition difficult to prevent. We present an audit of patients admitted to a medical emergency unit, aiming to investigate: (i) the incidence of transfusion-associated circulatory overload; and (ii) whether cases were reported to the haemovigilance system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article presents a comparative analysis of socio-economic disparities in relation to treatment-seeking strategies and healthcare expenditures in poor neighbourhoods within larger health systems in four cities in India, Indonesia and Thailand. About 200 households in New Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Jogjakarta and Phitsanulok were repeatedly interviewed over 12 months to relate health problems with health seeking and health financing at household level. Quantitative data were complemented with ethnographic studies involving the same neighbourhoods and a number of private practitioners at each site.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMed Anthropol Q
June 2012
This article explores the impact of intensive competition within the pharmaceutical industry and among private providers on health care in an Indian city. In-depth interviewing and clinical observation were used over a period of 18 months. Private practitioners and chemists who provided regular services to inhabitants of a poor neighborhood in central Bhubaneswar were included.
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