Terry Maguire 
So the NHS may finally be clearing its shelves of homeopathic practice and remedies. To address the current funding crisis, the NHS has announced that a number of remedies which are either ineffective, frankly dangerous or both will no longer be available. Homeopathy is one of them and rightly so. No doubt some, perhaps Prince Charles a strong advocate for homeopathy, will protest that this move will adversely affect the health of the nation but they will be in the …
The other weekend, along with Angela Merkel, I was in Berlin. Not together of course; she was there to work on forming a new government, I in pursuit of pleasure. Berlin is a great city both for business and pleasure with its unique culture and complex history; magnetic and absorbing it just keeps pulling me back. We stayed near Potsdamer Strasse in the old Siemens building; the company’s HQ before it was destroyed by Allied bombs in the 1940s. …
Imagine a producer at Al Jazeera, the Qatari TV channel, pitching a program idea to his managers which goes something like this. We select a group of overweight elderly Doha Residents, people with a certain celebrity in our beloved Kingdom – we want the audience to like them but they need to be men of the people – and we take them off to Britain where we take them on a road trip around; public houses, distilleries, micro-breweries and vineyards …
Ireland bucks the UK trend in drug overdose deaths; here they are more likely to result from “prescription medicines” than “illegal drugs”. Coroners locally implicate; tramadol, oxycodone or fentanyl in overdose more frequently than in England, Scotland or Wales where deaths are mainly linked to; heroin or cocaine. One implication is that prescription medicines are more readily available and, extending this logic, doctors and pharmacists are in some way involved; if we did our jobs better drug deaths would be …
It seems far-fetched, risible even, yet some experts claim the Camino de Santiago de Compostella is the origin of the European Union project. The argument goes that the pilgrims of the Middle-Ages who tramped across the many Pilgrim Ways that coalesce in the City of Santiago, north-west Spain, brought tolerance of differences and a focus on a common goal; a road that eventually led to the idea of a united Europe. Pilgrim’s objectives were spiritual, religious and off course selfish. …
We are currently in Belfast experiencing a significant increase in the number of people with drug addictions and I’m informed that similar rises in prevalence are occurring elsewhere. In addiction things are never simple. A 24-year-old patient who died back in the spring died of an overdose of opioids – he frequently had a number of fentanyl patches adhered to his body – but he also was a heavy smoker of marijuana and regularly took a range of prescription medicines …
Following a heart stent insertion and a chance meeting with an old friend I hadn’t seen for years – we were each at our GP surgery picking up heart medicines – we decided “walking for old men” would be our thing for 2017. The medical evidence is clear; exercise is better medicine than our prescribed pills; we just needed the commitment. Sufficient exercise is more effective in reducing the risk of heart disease than taking blood pressure and cholesterol medicines; …
My eldest daughter, a primary school teacher, returns to Qatar this weekend as do hundreds of young people from these shores supporting the education systems across the Middle East. With developments over the summer I felt anxious as we said our farewells; she was sanguine as young people are. Having left the Emirate in June just after the borders and airspace were closed, and sanctions imposed by a coalition cobbled together by Saudi Arabia, no fresh chicken or milk were …
Seanin Graham’s exclusive in the Irish News “Desperate Patients Pay for Eastern Europe Ops” highlights a persistent problem in our Health Service; lengthening waiting lists. She focuses on the use by local patients of surgical services in other European states and identifies the lengths some will go to improve their situation. She has identified the problem and, for very few patients, an expensive solution, and where this is a useful reminder that as a population we deserve better, she fails …
We all felt sorry for the articulate young man whose apartment near Sandyrow was damaged by an 11th Night bonfire. He, sensibly, didn’t want to be recognised so the interview was done off camera. He wanted to live in safety, he wanted compensation for the damage but above all he didn’t want to annoy anyone or interfere with “cultural expression”. These seem reasonable middle-class values and who could argue with them? His neighbour, a thirty-something woman, equally articulate, praised the …
It’s now OK, according to a paper in BMJ not to finish a course of antibiotics. It is merely a myth according to researchers who can find no evidence that stopping your antibiotics when you feel well, does not lead to bug-resistance as we have always believed. Doctors, however, in spite of this finding are still suggesting that you should continue to take antibiotics as instructed and that means completing the course. It’s all a bit confusing and what’s the …
Charlie Gard will probably die in the next few days. His death I hope will be private, peaceful and dignified and my sincere sympathy to his parents Connie Yates and Chris Gard and I truly hope they can move on with their lives after the torture of the last few months. Charlie’s short, tragic life has been lived too much in the glare of publicity, and as a result many will know of his case and the legal wranglings surrounding …
Good grief Northern Ireland you’re getting bigger! One-in-four of us has now moved up the scales to possess a “Over-30-BMI-Body”. Given that the expansion of the Ulster waist-line is threatening to bankrupt the Health Service in 20 years, obesity should be weighing heavily on the Health Minister’s mind; if only we had one. If we had, he or she should recognise the seriousness of the issue and scrap our Obesity Strategy (Fitter Futures for All: Framework for Preventing and Addressing …
There was palpable shock and genuine grief among the staff of Queens on Sunday evening following announcement of the death of the Vice-Chancellor, Paddy Johnston. A top flight academic and brilliant administrator had died suddenly in his prime when he had so much more to give. We were in the same year at St Columb’s College, Derry during the first half of the 1970s. He being a day boy and I being a boarder, and being in different classes of …
It’s all in a day’s work. Every day is different in community pharmacy and the stories we hear could not be made up. Terry Maguire relates an unfortunate, frightening and bizarre night one of his patients had. Wet clay patches dappled his oversized anorak, his reddened face was muddied and his greying, thinning hair; wet and woolly. He was smiling manically and exuded a strong stench of stale urine and strong alcohol. Had it been closing-time I might have …
The mayhem an estimated 900 troubled youths impose on the West Belfast community – a community of 100,000 souls – is staggering according to a N. Ireland Assembly report which is putting in place a support programme to turn lives around. These individuals, mostly males, mostly in their late teens and early twenties, act antisocially which is a problem yes but the real worry is that, for a small but significant number at least, self-harm and suicide is a real …
I attended a community meeting called to address the local “Drug Crisis”. My invitation to join the panel was at short notice but I accepted; I am the local pharmacist and I am a concerned citizen. The last time this problem got out of hand I ended up with the point of a Bowie knife up my nose. The stimulus for the meeting was the weekend deaths of two local young men from drug overdose. A 27 year old was …
With revulsion, confusion and perhaps too much hypocritical moral indignation the World is coming to terms with yet another chemical weapons attack in Syria in the last few days. But toxic chemicals have always been in the arsenals of our armies. It is less acceptable to use them today off course but is there a good, proper or humane way to kill our enemies? Whether it be the typhoid containing cow carcasses of the Middle-Ages, the mustard gas of …
