Category: Health

Indonesia’s second president General Soeharto had a fix-all to calm restless citizens demanding improvements. He’d pronounce a numbered plan. (more…)

As the COVID 19 infection curve flattens and we look forward to a potential easing of restrictions on the lives we once knew, it is appropriate to start contemplating what sort of world we want to create “on the other side”. (more…)

When we meet people walking towards us, have you noticed how anxious many look? Anxiety can be damaging to mental health. What can we do to help reduce damaging anxiety? (more…)

By the end of February 1919 the NSW government, by prompt and strict measures, had, in today’s parlance, ‘flattened the curve’. But the worst was still to come.

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For many of us, forced to work at home or to not work at all, the COVID-19 crisis has driven home the importance of mental health and how work interacts with our sense of wellbeing. (more…)

Global military spending continues to rise. Critical health goals could be achieved for a fraction of what we spend on wars. Focussing funding on health rather than military spending, globally and in Australia, would create more jobs, healthier communities, and budgetary savings. (more…)

COVID-19 is the worst pandemic Australia has faced since the visit of the ‘Spanish Lady’ just over a century ago. What lessons can we learn from that earlier experience?

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The privacy versus safety debate around coronavirus tracking and tracing technology examines the wrong dilemma. Choosing the right tracking solution is equally important. (more…)

The coronavirus presents us with a paradox: none of us want to catch it, but all of us wish we had recovered from it. It is only a matter of time before those who have had it will be given more freedoms than the rest. (more…)

Sydney was struck by bubonic plague in 1900 creating panic throughout the ramshackle town on Sydney Cove. The city fell under a state of siege and a shutdown. Why did it work? (more…)

President Trump, always blaming someone to hide his own inadequacies, has vented his fury on both China and the WHO. The WHO, for one precious week, had accepted China’s advice that the novel respiratory infections were not transmitted from human to human. (more…)

How do we keep our population healthy? From a patient perspective we don’t have a health system. From a provider’s perspective we don’t have a health system. (more…)

NATO and most western armies switched from macho big-bore rifles to 7.62mm for the strategic reason that a wounded enemy requires far more resources than a dead one. (more…)

“Isolation” is also a crisis of communication for us as social beings. And an opportunity to consider with fresh interest how we can more thoughtfully support others – receiving with grace and gratitude what they may have to give. (more…)

Australia’s decision to spearhead an international enquiry into the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic –read China’s lack of transparency and the WHO’s mistakes –is a nice hoary bellow from our domestic political ramparts, but it is a policy mistake. (more…)

Here’s a little help in understanding that magic figure – the “R” value. (more…)

Relative to most other countries, including Australia, Vietnam seems to be faring extremely well in the shadow of the current coronavirus pandemic, and has recently earned praise from the WHO. Vietnam had only 275 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and thankfully no deaths from the virus, as at 17 April 2020. (more…)