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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Feb 26

Grateful to Annie Kelly and The Guardian for the opportunity to publish this opinion piece alongside the testimonies of those who have dared to bear witness to the assault on healthcare they experienced in Gaza.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

‘They forced me to stand for hours in the cold, arms raised and shackled’: eight Gaza doctors on their Israeli prison ordeal

Senior doctors and surgeons describe the torture, starvation, humiliation and denial of medical care they endured while being held without charge

www.theguardian.com

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Feb 26

It is often assumed that international law provides an absolute prohibition on attacks on healthcare facilities in war.

It does not. But it should.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

The playbook for bombing hospitals in war: deny, deflect, justify. The law must close these loopholes | Maarten van der Heijden

Cynical actors exploit the legal ambiguities around targeting healthcare facilities, as seen in Gaza. Unequivocal protections are needed

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

SCPA Misfit @mochamisfit.bsky.social · Feb 3

We are in a constitutional crisis. Thank you congressmen Murphy and Raskin.

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · Feb 3

Murphy: "This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let's call it what it is."

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 21

"I knew a premature VHF diagnosis could cause panic and have profound political implications." – A very strong piece in NEJM by Dr JP Sibomana on the personal and political complexity of diagnosing Rwanda’s first Marburg outbreak. doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2413951

Fight or Flight — Facing the Marburg Outbreak in Rwanda | NEJM

Having diagnosed two ICU patients with the first known cases of Marburg virus disease in Rwanda, a physician must prioritize limiting spread, despite pleas for transfer from the patients’ families.

doi.org

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · Nov 17

We now have 3 starter packs for Global Health Nerds!

go.bsky.app/DgwRPwD

go.bsky.app/RScFWyt

go.bsky.app/ADqkPeH

Will keep updating!

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 15

Progress amnesia? 🧠

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 15

Fantastic work!!

Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 15

Who says that? Nobody oposes alcohol-free beer overall. Health agencies just ask for similar advertisement standards so as to not expose children/youth to alcohol brand names, and do further research on impact. The author is some libertarian misinformer paid by Big Alcohol...

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 14

Right!!! Freetown is calling you. 😉 This was even right after the annual beach clean up. oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/eubeachclean...

EU - Sierra Leone Beach Clean-Up 2024

oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · Nov 13

imagine if you could imagine things

and then they were just like you imagined.

well, now we all get to live there --

or else

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 13

Thanks Anita!!

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

CHAI wrote a good article on the causes of the shortages of BPG that partially caused this or at least hamper treatment. academic.oup.com/inthealth/ar...

academic.oup.com

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

ELS is ‘experimental lab sample’, basically means improve the compound in the lab

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

(5/5) ⏰⏰⏰ We need to talk more about access to asthma medication, and access to treatment for NCDs as a whole. ⏰⏰⏰

#AsthmaCrisis #AccessToMedicines #NCDs

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

(4/5) Data does show severe asthma rates of around 25.6% in sub-Saharan Africa, with 4.6% of cases remaining uncontrolled despite high-intensity treatment. In these cases only biologicals could help, but universal access to those remains far away.

www.jaci-global.org/article/S277...

DEFINE_ME

www.jaci-global.org

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

(3/5) Even in the USA 1 in 3 patients are estimated struggled to access their inhalers, but also in India where the majority is produced they are not affordable for all. Most cases I heard about were about young people in sub-Saharan Africa. But there is really little data there on access.

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

(2/5) Inhalers are costly due to monopolistic pricing, patents on drug-device combos (device-hops), and regulatory hurdles that block cheaper generics. Recent reforms in inhalers to eliminate ozone-depleting propellants did not help either.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Patents and regulatory exclusivities on inhalers for asthma and COPD, 1986-2020

Inhalers are the mainstay of treatment for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These products face limited generic competition in the US and remain expensive. To better understand the st...

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

(1/5) The past months, I’ve heard many stories of people losing family members to asthma because they couldn’t access medication.

Asthma inhaler prices were already high, but have increased by 2-5x over the last years in many countries.

www.bbc.com/news/videos/...

www.voanews.com/a/nigerians-...

Cost of asthma inhalers: ‘People shouldn’t be paying to breathe’

Some inhalers in Nigeria have doubled or tripled in price since last year, leaving many struggling.

www.bbc.com

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

Consider yourself surprised! FAO usually does not welcome or push so much as a technical organisation, but it does significant work on the food safety of these products. UNEP wrote a report about the environmental promise of these products, FAO co-authored: www.unep.org/resources/wh...

What's Cooking? An assessment of potential impacts of selected novel alternatives to conventional animal products

The food systems are responsible for about 30% of the current anthropogenic GHG emissions, and animal products account for almost 60% of those emissions. There is a need to change the way we produce a...

www.unep.org

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 12

Have been dabbling a bit outside of the global health/medicines sphere lately. This Thursday I am speaking about countries' legislative frameworks for cell-based meat at the International Bar Association on behalf of the FAO. 🧫🥩https://www.ibanet.org/conference-details/CONF2628

Cultivated meat: opportunities and challenges | International Bar Association

A webinar presented by the IBA Agriculture and Food Section Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown or cell-based meat, introduces a groundbreaking approach to meat production, poised to tackle the c...

www.ibanet.org

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · Nov 11

And if you plan to host global health events and meetings, here is a list of visa friendly countries

communities.springernature.com/posts/visa-f...

Visa-friendly venues for global health meetings

Conference organizers have an obligation to host meetings in locations that are not visa-hostile. Are there ‘visa-friendly’ options that conference organizers should be considering? This crowd-sourced...

communities.springernature.com

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 11

@jessicareinisch.bsky.social So cool you’re researching UNRRA! I’m preparing a short piece on the role UNRRA/WHO in the local production of antibiotics atm :) Would love to discuss!

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

Joyce Chaplin @joycechaplin.bsky.social · Nov 8

Hello new followers from that bleak gray place! Reposting my first post on this site: a cyanometer, the instrument Alexander von Humboldt (among others) used to determine how blue any sky actually was

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Reposted by Maarten van der Heijden

Anita Williams @catanita.bsky.social · Nov 11

Hey #AMR people - am wanting to broaden the capture of the feed for other languages so if you know the key words for antimicrobial resistance in another language, please drop it in the replies below!

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · Nov 11

Would love to be added as well!

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