Britain’s biggest children’s hospital, part of a complex of four institutions that opened in Manchester last summer, is not just a godsend for critically ill children across the north-west. It is also the beating heart of a cluster of medical expertise that city officials hope will translate into future business.
The most recent Financial Times health supplement focuses on the health reform with article topics ranging from the effect of recession, US reform, and medical tourism. See below the list of articles included in this supplement.
Health in the news including Cancer and the Holocaust, digital plasters, healthcare and global warming, and gene therapy for eyes.
While US politicians argue about how to make healthcare more accessible and affordable, many Americans have found their own solution – going abroad for care. Medical tourism is not a new pheno¬menon. But as costs soar in developed countries and emerging markets see a lucrative new source of revenue in offering high-quality medical services to overseas visitors, this small corner of the healthcare industry is growing rapidly.
Consumers are bombarded with contradictory health messages through the media, often distorted through the lens of competing interest groups and their PR machinery.
Avoid the sun to protect your skin – no, some solar exposure is essential to prevent vitamin D deficiency. Moderate alcohol consumption is good for the heart – no, on balance, any drinking is bad for you. One week a study shows drinking coffee is beneficial; the next it is proved to be harmful. And so on.
My husband lost his health insurance two months before being diagnosed with stomach cancer. Joe had been a truck driver all his life, the hardest-working man I ever knew. But in 2005, with the cost of premiums rising, his company decided they couldn’t afford to pay for his health coverage. At the time, we weren’t sure what that meant for us and our four children. I had no idea it would be a death sentence for Joe. Or that only a few years later, I would be bogged down with $300,000 of debt.
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Two United States institutions wield enormous power over healthcare in the US and around the world. The US Food and Drug Administration has the authority to approve, supervise and withdraw drugs, medical devices and food across the world’s single largest market, while the National Institutes of Health, with an annual $30bn scientific research budget, is the envy of its global peers. With the growing pace of scientific discovery, the globalisation of the pharmaceutical industry and a more science-friendly administration in Washington, the two organisations are building their domestic power and broadening their international focus.
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When Steven Rose, a neuroscientist, began observing the US debate on attention deficit hyperactive disorder in the 1980s, just a few thousand stimulants were being dispensed in the UK each year. Today, doctors in England alone write more than 700,000 prescriptions annually.“Diagnosis and prescriptions rocketed in the 1990s, and in the UK, the numbers just keep going up,” says Prof Rose, who teaches at the Open University. “It just seems to me to be the business of drugging children.”
In the £1m ($1.66m) hole in the ground that is the decidedly well-appointed basement gym at the upscale London office of the international law firm Allen & Overy, it is 3pm.
How the recession could impact the future of healthcare systems around the world.