A practical, concise and illustrative discussion of universal hand conditions. Extensively edited, rewritten and updated by an experienced hand surgeon and hand therapist.

Millions of patients travel abroad every year, and the number of trips around the world to benefit from health services is increasing. The high level of global demand for health services has influenced the rapid development of the tourism industry. Many destinations providing high-quality healthcare services at low prices have emerged. Due to these developments in the industry, the health tourism market, one of the fastest growing markets, has emerged. Countries operating in the industry are also striving to increase their market shares. Therefore, it is important to understand the dynamics of this global phenomenon. Global Perspectives on the Opportunities and Future Directions of Health Tourism provides new theoretical, practical, and strategic insights into the field of health tourism. It discusses in detail the health tourism industry and its importance for the global economy, countries, and destinations. Covering topics such as elderly consumers, historical development, and image and branding, this premier reference source is an essential resource for government officials, hospital administrators, policymakers, business managers and executives, students and educators of higher education, librarians, researchers, and academicians.

‘How can there be only one dedicated hospital in the country for our children?’

When Madiba asked this question, he sowed the seeds of a challenge that would grow into a legacy.

A seed may be small but its size is disproportionate to what it can become over time. The Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital was a project that seemed impossible when it was just an idea that started with ten people seated around a dinner table. As they discussed the state of healthcare in the country and shared their experiences, they realised that it was the children of Southern Africa who were the most disadvantaged by the lack of dedicated paediatric facilities. At the end of the evening a statement by the late Dr Nthato Motlana took hold and became the catalyst for a remarkable journey: ‘I will speak to Nelson,’ he said.

With South Africa’s first democratically elected president Nelson Mandela’s backing, the board of the Children’s Fund was inspired to take up the challenge to address this vital need. After years of global research and advice from experts in numerous different fields a Trust was formed to oversee the project and, critically, to set about raising the one billion rand it would take to build, equip and staff a state-of-the-art children’s hospital.

The stories behind the planning for, fundraising and building of the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital are inspiring, personal, and sometimes heart-breaking. It was a long and arduous journey, beset with difficulties, but the dedicated team’s commitment and courage prevailed to create a living legacy that will truly impact the lives of children for generations to come.

Today, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Hospital in Johannesburg is a proud testimony to a uniquely African story which honours the memory of a great statesman and celebrates the children for whom he cared so deeply.

Examining the ways and extent to which systemic factors affect health outcomes with regard to quality, affordability and access to curative healthcare, this explorative book compares the relative merits of tax-funded Beveridge systems and insurance-based Bismarck systems. The Law and Policy of Healthcare Financing charts and compares healthcare system outcomes throughout 11 countries, from the UK to Colombia. Thematic chapters investigate the economic and legal explanations for the relevant similarities, variations and trends across the globe. Concluding that systemic factors may be less significant than previously believed, this comprehensive book notes that no one system consistently outperforms the others, yet incentives and funding improvements may lift performances across all curative healthcare systems. Analytical and comparative, this book will be of interest to academics working in the fields of health law and health economics. Public authorities including health ministries, policymakers and international health organisations will also find this to be an invaluable resource. Contributors include: F. Bachner, J. Bobek, J. Boertjens, P. Bogetoft, J.M. Burke, F. Dewallens, I. Durand-Zaleski, A. Geissler, C. Gongora Torres, M. Guy, T. Haanpera, J. Janus, S. Jerabkova, L. Lepuschutz, J. Lombard, M. Mikkers, G. O'Nolan, M.J. Perez-Villadoniga, H. Platou, K. Polin, W. Quentin, W. Sauter, V. Shestalova, K.H. Sovig, V. Stephani, A. van den Heever, J. van Manen, J. Vermeulen

Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) is a generic term for all methods that help people making decisions according to their preferences, in situations where there is more than one conflicting criterion. It is a branch of operational research dealing with finding optimal results in complex scenarios including various indicators, conflicting objectives and criteria. The approach of MCDM involves decision making concerning quantitative and qualitative factors. The importance and success of MCDM are due to the fact that they have successfully dealt with different types of problematics for supporting decision makers such as choice, ranking and sorting, description. Even though, each of the different problematics in MCDM is important, Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Sorting Methods will focus on sorting approaches across a wide range of interesting techniques and research disciplines. The applications which have been and can be solved by these techniques are more and more important in current real-world decision-making problems. Therefore, the book provides a clear overview of MCDM sorting methods and the different tools which can be used to solve real-world problems by revising such tools and characterizing them according to their performance and suitability for different types of problems. The book is aimed at a broad audience including computer scientists, engineers, geography and GIS experts, business and financial management experts, environment experts, and all those professional people interested in MCDM and its applications. The book may also be useful for teaching MCDM courses in fields such as industrial management, computer science, and applied mathematics, as new developments in multi-criteria decision making.

Currently, there is a critical need to integrate diversity and inclusion into health professions curricula and to diversify educators' approaches to teaching. The COVID-19 pandemic has most recently highlighted the systemic barriers that exist for our most vulnerable patients. To address these inequities, it is important to promote diversity and inclusion in thought, practice, and curricular content. Social and cultural experiences uniquely influence the learning experience, so a plurality of perspectives should be represented in educational material and seen in the classroom. Cases on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Health Professions Educator serves as a tool to enhance the structure and competencies of learners in health professions. This case book engages both learners and educators in health professions in robust discussions that serve to enhance awareness and knowledge around these issues with the expectation that knowledge will translate into practices that eventually reduce health inequities. Covering topics such as ableism, barriers to healthcare access, and mental health stigma, this case book is an indispensable resource for health professionals, educators and students in the health professions, hospital administrators, medical librarians, sociologists, government officials, researchers, and academicians.

In this collection of medical tales, a neurologist reckons with the stories we tell about our brains, and the stories our brains tell us.

A girl believes she has been struck blind for stealing a kiss. A mother watches helplessly as each of her children is replaced by a changeling. A woman is haunted each month by the same four chords of a single song. In neurology, illness is inextricably linked with narrative, the clues to unraveling these mysteries hidden in both the details of a patient's story and the tells of their body.

Stories are etched into the very structure of our brains, coded so deeply that the impulse for storytelling survives and even surges after the most devastating injuries. But our brains are also porous—the stories they concoct shaped by cultural narratives about bodies and illness that permeate the minds of doctors and patients alike. In the history of medicine, some stories are heard, while others—the narratives of women, of Black and brown people, of displaced people, of disempowered people—are too often dismissed.

In The Mind Electric, neurologist Pria Anand reveals—through case study, history, fable, and memoir—all that the medical establishment has overlooked: the complexity and wonder of brains in health and in extremis, and the vast gray area between sanity and insanity, doctor and patient, and illness and wellness, each separated from the next by the thin veneer of a different story.

Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to the Republic of Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology: that even the most peculiar symptoms can show us something universal about ourselves as humans.

Advances in Virus Research, Volume 115, the latest release in this comprehensive serial that highlights new advances in the field, includes updates on a variety of timely topics, including Plant viral nanotools, Mycoviruses, Rift Valley Fever virus entry and infection, and more.

‘Brave, compassionate and inspiring – it left me in floods of tears’ Adam Kay, author of This Is Going to Hurt

For more than twenty-five years, David Nott has taken unpaid leave from his job as a general and vascular surgeon with the NHS to volunteer in some of the world’s most dangerous war zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993, to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out life-saving operations and field surgery in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major London teaching hospital.

The conflicts he has worked in form a chronology of twenty-first-century combat: Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Darfur, Congo, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Gaza and Syria. But he has also volunteered in areas blighted by natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Nepal.

Driven both by compassion and passion, the desire to help others and the thrill of extreme personal danger, he is now widely acknowledged to be the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world. But as time went on, David Nott began to realize that flying into a catastrophe – whether war or natural disaster – was not enough. Doctors on the ground needed to learn how to treat the appalling injuries that war inflicts upon its victims. Since 2015, the foundation he set up with his wife, Elly, has disseminated the knowledge he has gained, training other doctors in the art of saving lives threatened by bombs and bullets.

War Doctor is his extraordinary story

The fascinating, untold story of the air we breathe, the hidden life it contains, and invisible dangers that can turn the world upside down

Every day we draw in two thousand gallons of air—and thousands of living things. From the ground to the stratosphere, the air teems with invisible life. This last great biological frontier remains so mysterious that it took over two years for scientists to finally agree that the Covid pandemic was caused by an airborne virus.

In Air-Borne, award-winning New York Times columnist and author Carl Zimmer leads us on an odyssey through the living atmosphere and through the history of its discovery. We travel to the tops of mountain glaciers, where Louis Pasteur caught germs from the air, and follow Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh above the clouds, where they conducted groundbreaking experiments. We meet the long-forgotten pioneers of aerobiology including William and Mildred Wells, who tried for decades to warn the world about airborne infections, only to die in obscurity.

Air-Borne chronicles the dark side of aerobiology with gripping accounts of how the United States and the Soviet Union clandestinely built arsenals of airborne biological weapons designed to spread anthrax, smallpox, and an array of other pathogens. Air-Borne also leaves readers looking at the world with new eyes—as a place where the oceans and forests loft trillions of cells into the air, where microbes eat clouds, and where life soars thousands of miles on the wind.

Weaving together gripping history with the latest reporting on Covid and other threats to global health, Air-Borne surprises us on every page as it reveals the hidden world of the air.

This title attempts to capture the essence of transformation and trends in the South African health sector. On the one hand, it offers an overview of recent and current developments in the South African health care system; and on the other, of trends in the health status of the South African population. The title retains a strong historical thread, but the focus is generally on the nature of transformation process, gains made and failures encountered.

Medical students and professionals at any level, seeking any degree, certification, or with any job title, agree that this best-seller is an incredibly useful tool. Nurses, medical coders and administrators say it is a must-have to do a quick lookup or to intensely study for an exam. Finding an answer is as easy as turning one page of this 6 page laminated guide that was expertly organized by our author and designers for quick reference that is faster than the internet. Abbreviations and acronyms covered in this guide: Weights & Measurements Drugs Formulations Administration References Standards & Regulations Diagnostic Testing Professional Designations Managed Care Agencies & Organizations Health Assessment Specialized Areas & Facilities Locations & Directions Body Systems Blood System Cardiovascular System Endocrine System Female Reproductive System Gastrointestinal System Integumentary System Lymphatic/Immune System Muscular System Male Reproductive System Nervous System Respiratory System Skeletal System Special Senses: Eye/Ear Urinary System

Exploring the potential of poetry and poetic language as a means of conveying perspectives on ageing and later life, this book examines questions such as 'how can we understand ageing and later life?' and 'how can we capture the ambiguities and complexities that the experiences of growing old in time and place entail?' As poetic language illuminates, transfigures and enchants our being in the world, it also offers insights into the existential questions that are amplified as we age, including the vulnerabilities and losses that humble us and connect us. Literary gerontology and narrative gerontology have highlighted the importance of linguistic representations of ageing. While the former has been concerned primarily with the analysis of published literary works, the latter has foregrounded the individual and collective meaning making through narrative resources in old age. There has, however, been less interest in how poetic language, both as a genre and as a practice, can illuminate ageing. This volume suggests a path towards the poetics of ageing by means of presenting analyses of published poetry on ageing written by poets from William Shakespeare to Wallace Stevens; the use of reading and writing poetry among ordinary people in old age; and the poetic nuances that emerge from other literary practices and contexts in relation to ageing - including personal poetic reflections from many of the contributing authors. The volume brings together international scholars from disciplinary backgrounds as diverse as cultural psychology, literary studies, theology, sociology, narrative medicine, cultural gerontology and narrative gerontology, and will deploy a variety of empirical and critical methodologies to explore how poetry and poetic language may challenge dominant discourses and illuminate alternative understandings of ageing.