Providing a comprehensive introduction to the study of tropical medicine, this new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include new content and more illustrations and clinical photographs to aid understanding. Now fully supported by a companion website containing hundreds of interactive multiple-choice questions, and available in a range of digital formats, Tropical Medicine Lecture Notes is the perfect resource for study and revision, and is the ideal companion for ...

Supporting Children and Families gathers together the lessons learned from perhaps the largest scale social experiment ever undertaken in England - Sure Start, the programme designed to improve the emotional development, health and education of children.It boils down the huge amount of knowledge and experience generated by the Sure Start programmes and local evaluation studies, with chapters encompassing child development and healthcare, partnership working with existing local serv...

The acclaimed author of Carved in Sand—a veteran investigative journalist who endured persistent back pain for decades—delivers the definitive book on the subject: an essential examination of all facets of the back pain industry, exploring what works, what doesn't, what may cause harm, and how to get on the road to recovery.In her effort to manage her chronic back pain, investigative reporter Cathryn Jakobson Ramin spent years and a small fortune on a panoply of treatments...

The struggle against deadly microbes is endless. Diseases that have plagued human beings since ancient times still exist, new maladies make their way into the headlines, we are faced with vaccine shortages, and the threat of germ warfare has reemerged as a worldwide threat.In this riveting account, medical historian Howard Markel takes an eye-opening look at the fragility of the American public health system. He tells the distinctive stories of six epidemics–tuberculosis, bubonic p...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March 2010 is a landmark in U.S. social legislation, and the Supreme Court's recent decision upholding the Act has ensured that it will remain the law of the land. The new law extends health insurance to nearly all Americans, fulfilling a century-long quest and bringing the United States to parity with other industrial nations. Affordable Care aims to control rapidly rising health care costs and promises to make th...

Just as the Great Fire of London took place one year after the Great Plague broke out, in the 14th Century, Germany and Latvia were still burying their dead from the Black Death, or bubonic plague, when they were hit by a strange epidemic--often called Dancing Mania, St. John's Dance, or St. Vitus' Dance--that caused thousands of people to literally "dance" themselves to death. Due to the spasmodic jerkings and twitchings of the "dancers," it was thought at the time that the victims were p...

If you believe that the latest blockbuster medication is worth a premium price over your generic brand, or that doctors have access to all the information they need about a drug’s safety and effectiveness each time they write a prescription, Dr. Jerry Avorn has some sobering news. Drawing on more than twenty-five years of patient care, teaching, and research at Harvard Medical School, he shares his firsthand experience of the wide gap in our knowledge of the effectiveness of one medication...

Frank Bowden, a specialist in the field of infectious disease and sexual health, looks at one bug at a time, weaving around them the stories of his patients and their families, the doctors and the difficulties they face and the horrors and successes of hospitals and health care programs. Through Bowden's own work in the field, we encounter Swine Flu, Golden Staph, SARS, Hepatitis, and HIV, and learn crucial lessons about public health and the human experience of disease.

A palliative care doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial ethical issues of our time on his quest to transform care through the end of life.It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Statistics show that the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home, yet many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to "fight ...

This book traces the social and environmental determinants of human infectious diseases from the Neolithic to the present day. Despite recent high profile discoveries of new pathogens, the major determinants of these emerging infections are ancient and recurring. These include changing modes of subsistence, shifting populations, environmental disruptions, and social inequalities. The recent labeling of the term "re-emerging infections" reflects a re-emergence, not so much of the diseases t...

On July 12, 1966, the Medical Care Insurance Act was passed by the federal House of Commons after a ferocious public debate that pitted the vast majority of Canadians against a powerful alliance of business, insurance companies, and doctors.More than thirty years later, the same battle is being fought all over again. Only now, the forces opposed to medicare are more ideologically unified, more richly endowed, and tied to transnational corporations whose power exceeds that of entire...

A primer in plain English that explains how health insurance will work under the new legislation and how it will affect your care and your choices going forward.Now that "Obamacare" (as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is popularly known) has become the law of the land, millions of Americans will need help figuring out exactly how the new system will work and how it might affect their lives.This guide will teach people how the new health care ex...