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settings, direct observations of humanitarian responders, public health practitioners, human rights defenders, and policy and academic researchers complement other sources of information. This can notably fill gaps resulting from shortages of data and lack of evidence. A case in point is violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) protecting humanitarian health workers. Article 14 under the Geneva Convention guaranteed the protection of healthcare workers, transport, and facilities, and those injured during war. Since the start of the twentieth century the
9 Cliona Loughnane Governing healthcare: the case of Universal Health Insurance – by competition Introduction One of the defining features of the Irish health system, since the establishment of Voluntary Health Insurance (VHI) in the 1950s, has been a heavy reliance by those who can afford it on private health insurance. Thus the Irish health system, which is three quarters funded by taxation (Wren, Connolly and Cunningham, 2015), is a strange mix of a national health system with high levels of private insurance cover (with up to 50% of the population holding
15.1 In 2006, six healthy volunteers at Northwick Park Hospital were rushed to Critical Care after suffering an adverse reaction in a phase 1 clinical trial. 2 At least four of them suffered multiple organ failure, and it was feared that they may have suffered permanent damage to their immune systems. The drug, TGN1412, was a monoclonal antibody designed to treat leukaemia and rheumatoid arthritis. Volunteers were paid £2,000. 3 The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded that the reaction resulted from an ‘unpredicted biological
Background: Studying Attacks on Healthcare in Syria The past years have seen a flurry of efforts to comprehensively understand attacks and their impact by a wide range of actors. The unprecedented attacks in the Syrian conflict in particular constitute a watershed, with Syria arguably forming the best researched example to date. In Syria, attacks on healthcare have gained a systematic character since the start of the conflict ( Fouad et
9 ‘Community healthcare’: Struggles and conflicts of an emerging public health system in the United States, 1915–45 Rima D. Apple Introduction In the first half of the twentieth century, concern for community health, particularly worries over the high rates of infant and maternal mortality and of tuberculosis cases, spurred the development of public health nursing in the United States.1 The increase in public health nurses and the variety of organisations supplying them indicate that American society strongly believed in their effectiveness. Yet, their very
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concluded that the reaction resulted from an ‘unpredicted biological action’ of the drug in humans. It found no deficiencies in the manufacturers’ work, the formulation of the drug or its administration to the participants. 4 An independent Expert Scientific Review, chaired by Professor Duff, was less sympathetic
The hands of healthcare workers have been acknowledged as a key vehicle for the transmission of healthcare-associated infections (HAI). There is evidence that they acquire transient microorganisms through touch and that these are readily transferred to other surfaces and to patients. 1 Hand hygiene has been perceived as a cornerstone of infection prevention and control in protecting patients from HAI, but since the mid-1980s, non-sterile clinical gloves (NSCG) have come into widespread use. Attitudes to both hand hygiene and the use of gloves have evolved
1 Payment in the history of healthcare ‘The voluntary hospital system is not dead’, declared one delegate at the 1938 annual conference of the Incorporated Association of Hospital Officers; ‘It may be changing, it may eventually become something other than a voluntary hospital system, but it is not dead.’ 1 Ten years later it would be brought to an abrupt end, nationalised and integrated almost wholesale into the new
This book examines the payment systems operating in British hospitals before the National Health Service (NHS). An overview of the British situation is given, locating the hospitals within both the domestic social and political context, before taking a wider international view. The book sets up the city of Bristol as a case study to explore the operation and meaning of hospital payments on the ground. The foundation of Bristol's historic wealth, and consequent philanthropic dynamism, was trade. The historic prominence of philanthropic associations in Bristol was acknowledged in a Ministry of Health report on the city in the 1930s. The distinctions in payment served to reinforce the differential class relations at the core of philanthropy. The act of payment heightens and diminishes the significance of 1948 as a watershed in the history of British healthcare. The book places the hospitals firmly within the local networks of care, charity and public services, shaped by the economics and politics of a wealthy southern city. It reflects the distinction drawn between and separation of working-class and middle-class patients as a defining characteristic of the system that emerged over the early twentieth century. The rhetorical and political strategies adopted by advocates of private provision were based on the premise that middle-class patients needed to be brought in to a revised notion of the sick poor. The book examines why the voluntary sector and wider mixed economies of healthcare, welfare and public services should be so well developed in Bristol.
1 Baby and infant healthcare in Dresden, 1897–1930 Bettina Blessing Introduction Until the end of the eighteenth century sick children were, for the most part, cared for at home and, if admitted to hospital, were cared for alongside adults. The first children’s hospital, the Hôpitale des Enfants Malades, was opened in Paris in 1802. In Germany the first children’s ward opened in 1829–30 at the Charité in Berlin with thirty to forty-five beds.1 Some children’s hospitals had special baby wards. Scientific interest in children began at the turn of the nineteenth