Grouchy Smurf is Grumpy: On Globally Relevant Research

I’m a bit of a Grinch. Or a grump, or maybe just a cynic.

Anyway, I read this article about how poor dental health can lead to pneumonia, therefore you must brush your teeth twice a day and floss once a day. The research was done by the Yale University School of Medicine, so I don’t for a moment doubt its legitimacy. They were also open-minded enough to mention that the precise relationship between oral bacteria and pneumonia must still be determined.

However, I fail to see the importance of such research in the context of health in the 21^st century.

The countries where the general standard of living is high enough to worry about regular teeth brushing also happen to be the countries where health care is of such quality that pneumonia need no longer be a death sentence.

Inspired by the Elderly

After you’re older, two things are possibly more important than any others: health and money. 

Helen Gurley Brown

I am currently on my Family Medicine Rotation. We visited a nearby old-age home yesterday. I was not really looking forward to it, but it blew my mind.

So what did you do for Mandela Day?

Tata Madiba turns 93 years old today. In honour of the many years he spent in service of South Africa and in fact all of humanity, 18 July is “Mandela Monday”. Citizens are asked to spend 67 minutes in service of their community – one minute for every year that Nelson Mandela worked for freedom, peace and equality.

Living in South Africa there has naturally been hype about this for some time and I have been mulling over the idea incessantly.

One question I have asked is, “Should doctors and nurses and social workers (etc) feel obliged to participate?”

Hands-on Learning… On a Weekeend!

This post should be about Psychiatry since that is what I am writing next week. But… it’s not.

There is a Maties Community Service Clinic this weekend. I put my name down as volunteer about 6 weeks ago, but cancelled because of that darn test. However, almost all the volunteers also cancelled (for various reasons), so I decided to go anyway. I would learn more there than in front of my books at any rate.

My Mini MSF

I have been meaning to write about this for a while. My university has a community service program called “Maties Community Service.” It encompasses several different community service projects. There are literacy projects, small business management projects, orphanage project.

The Health Sciences Faculty was originally called USCOR – University of Stellenbosch Clinical Organisation (as one of my friends put it, the doctors of yesterday were not particularly original).