Deportation and despair in context
Assessments of the health needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe tend to focus on trauma suffered prior to exile and during the flight to the host country. Less attention has been paid to the ill effects of the...
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Placebo, participation and surgery
A therapeutic effect that cannot be attributed to an active ingredient of medication is termed ‘placebo’. The ‘placebo effect’ is far from a neutral description of the effect of ‘inert drugs’, being associated with the quackery and deception of sugar...
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Review: La Fille Inconnue (The Unknown Girl)
In a previous post, I lamented John Berger’s failure to represent realistically contextualised doctor-patient relations in his photo essay (with Jean Mohr) A Fortunate Man. By way of contrast, in reviewing The Unknown Girl or La Fille Inconnue, I argue...
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A Fortunate Man: the story of a country doctor
John Berger: 5 November 1926 to 2 January 2017 I took John Berger’s book A Fortunate Man: the story of a country doctor to read over the New Year holiday. Berger’s account of a General Practitioner working in the Forest...
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Review ‘Fatima': Insightful and Moving Account of Muslim Mother Working in France
‘Fatima’: Philippe Faucon’s insightful account of an immigrant Muslim mother living in France Fatima is raising her two teenage daughters in Lyon, having migrated from North Africa to marry a man from whom she is now divorced. She has two...
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Adventures in Human Being
Francis, Gavin (2015) Adventures in Human Being, London: Profile Books. Much praise has been lavished on ‘Adventures in Human Being’ by Gavin Francis, a multi-prize-winning best-seller admired by Hilary Mantel (who calls the book ‘sober and beautiful’), John Berger and Robin McKie....
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Scarred for life
At a research meeting last week, a general practitioner who offers health checks to young, unaccompanied refugees, described his work. He had interviewed 44 young men from Afghanistan who all, report themselves to be in good health, with no special...
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Alan Kurdi
The pitiful picture of a child who drowned during a failed sea crossing from Turkey to Greece seems to have done what reams of analysis and commentary could not: shifted the narrative. The image of Alan Kurdi’s small body, being...
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Conceptualizing the ‘migrant crisis’ in Europe
Images of young men trying to enter lorries queuing around the Port of Calais have illustrated the ‘migrant crisis’ this June. Industrial action by port employees disrupted lorry as well as ferry travel, and was partly in response to the...
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What is the point of hospitals?
In the London Review of Books, Paul Farmer argues the case for building hospitals as a necessity, not a luxury, for poor countries and rich countries alike. Farmer points to the hypocrisy of a ‘basic minimum package’ for ‘resource poor...
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Healthcare heroes – Raed Arafat (#1 in an occasional series)
Some health ministers are more inspiring than destructive. Jeremy Hunt should take notice
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Incentivizing vulnerability: Regulating migration