This past year, as with the years before, the international news has been replete with stories of humanitarian disasters. War, drought, flood, earthquake, disease — there are constantly populations in crisis, constantly people for whom the difference between life and death lies in the response of the outside world. Perhaps it has always been this way. One thing that has changed, however, is who is doing the responding. Where disaster relief had once been overwhelmingly funded and provided by nations, increasingly we have seen that response to humanitarian disasters has been coming from ... Read More
Dicker With Your Doc? Not So Fast…
January 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
"How to Haggle With Your Doctor” was the title of a recent Business section column in The New York Times. This is one of many similar directives to the public (as seen here, here, here and here) urging us to lower the high price of our health care by going mano a mano with our physicians about the price of tests they recommend and the drugs they prescribe. Such articles provide simple, common-sense recommendations about how to respond to the urgency many of us feel — insured or uninsured — to reduce our health care expenses. With unemployment at 9.4 percent and more than 50 million ... Read More
Dispatch from Dakar: Gathered to Fight Fistula
December 21, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Today [Dec. 9] is the final day of the International Society of Obstetric Fistula Surgeons meeting in Dakar, Senegal. It has been an incredibly busy few days as fistula surgeons and health professionals have come together to share diverse experiences, research findings and recommendations for improving quality of treatment, management and prevention of obstetric fistula. Representatives from more than 40 countries are participating in the conference, all sharing the common goal of working together to improve fistula care and ultimately, a vision for eradication of this preventable condition ... Read More