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A scientist’s opinion: Interview with João Breda on patient safety and digital health
Dr. João Breda is the Head of the World Health Organization’s Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office in Athens (Greece). The theme for World Patient Safety Day 2024, 'Improving Diagnosis for Patient Safety,' is a crucial focus area. What challenges and opportunities do you foresee in achieving safer diagnostic processes in a digital health ...
World Patient Safety Day: Preventing harm in healthcare in a digitalised world
17 September is World Patient Safety Day. Can innovation and technology help to guarantee patient safety? Experts believe it is crucial to invest more in reducing patient harm. It is also important to fully understand the pros and cons of using new digital health technologies for this purpose.
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Dr. Francisca Vargas Lopes about the mental health of young people
A woman sitting on the floor in front of a couchWHO data show that young people aged 18-29 are 30% to 80% more likely to report symptoms of depression or anxiety than adults. What are the primary reasons for this, and how have these trends evolved? Francisca Vargas Lopes: I think this is a very ...
A scientist’s opinion: Interview with Hannes Jarke about the mental health of young people
WHO data show that young people aged 18-29 are 30% to 80% more likely to report symptoms of depression or anxiety than adults. What are the primary reasons for this, and how have these trends evolved? Hannes Jarke: This is a highly complex issue. The answer depends on which country and what other determinants we're ...
Protecting the mental well-being of European youth: What can be done?
In Europe, the number of young people (aged 18-29) with mental health problems has at least doubled since the beginning of COVID-19. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death among adolescents aged 15–19 in our continent. In addition, almost two-thirds of young people are at risk of depression. Mental health issues are now ...
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Maria Elena Bottazzi on vaccines in low- and middle-income countries
Maria Elena Bottazzi, born in Italy, raised in Honduras, is a microbiologist and infectious disease expert at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, United States). She and her colleague Peter Hotez led a team in India to develop the Covid-19 vaccine Corbevax, get it manufactured, and then give it away to low- and middle-income countries, patent-free. ...
Low cost and open source: vaccines in developing countries
In South Africa, a scientific knowledge transfer hub is working to create a Covid-19 vaccine based on the publicly available sequence of Moderna's mRNA vaccine, without Moderna's involvement but with its approval. In India, scientists are also testing a vaccine to fight SARS-CoV-2. These seem to be big steps for developing countries in order to ...
A scientist’s opinion: interview with Petro Terblanche on the first African vaccine hub
Petro Terblanche is Health Science Professor at North-West University and is Managing Director at Afrigen Biologics in South Africa. Next to developing an open source vaccine, Afrigen hosts a global vaccine hub to build capacity and capabilities in low- and middle-income countries to design, develop and produce messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines. Professor Terblanche, as managing ...