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On arrival at the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium, on the outskirts of Boonville in the northwest of the state, new patients would be x-rayed. If they were extremely lucky, it might turn out that they did not have tuberculosis after all. “An infrequent, but ecstatic event”, write Larry Floyd and Joseph Bates in Stalking The Great Killer, their fascinating account of the fight against tuberculosis in 19th and 20th century Arkansas. Sanatorium treatment at Booneville and beyond centred on fre...

On Feb 6 and 7, 2023, tens of thousands of nurses across England went on strike. The walkout was called by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents some 465 000 registered nurses, midwives, students, and nursing support workers in the UK. It followed 2 days of strikes in January and another 2 days late last year. Another round of strikes has been called for March 1–3, which will include nurses working in intensive care units and cancer care.

When Laura Lambert started to feel ill on Feb 5, 2017, she thought it was the beginning of a flu infection. She had no idea that it was, in fact, pneumococcal septicaemia and she was about to face the fight of her life—a fight she very nearly lost.

Having survived the harrowing war aggression on her two homelands, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina—sometimes by the narrowest of margins as shells missed her location by small distances—Alemka Markotić, like many who lived through those times, feels lucky to be alive and has in her CV under “Other skills and competencies” ‘Survival in wartime’.

Even though both the absolute and relative risk of AF-related ischemic stroke declined over the past 20 years, every fourth ischemic stroke in 2020 still had a preceding or concurrent AF diagnosis. This represents a great potential for future gains in stroke prevention among AF patients.

Understanding the protection conferred by previous infection against repeat infection, illness, and severe disease is key to projecting the future epidemiology of COVID-19 and to guiding vaccine policy decisions. In The Lancet, The COVID-19 Forecasting Team1 report data from a systematic review and meta-analysis of 65 studies from 19 different countries estimating the reduction in COVID-19 risk among individuals with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, compared with those without a previous infection...

To support national immunisation policy, many countries around the world have established National Immunization Technical Advisory Groups (NITAGs). NITAGs serve as independent expert committees providing scientific advice and making recommendations that guide immunisation policy and programmatic decisions. WHO considers NITAGs an essential part of national immunisation programmes, and the Global Vaccine Action Plan recommended that all countries establish, or have access to, a NITAG.1 Although e...

Many people sterilised under Utahs eugenics law are likely living today. While some states have taken steps to reckon with their roles in depriving people of their reproductive rights, Utah lacks even an official acknowledgment of this shameful, medical history. Given the advanced age of the potential survivors, time is running out for a reconciliation that can be experienced by those who were most harmed by the practice.

In early December, 2022, China abandoned what until then had been among the most stringent policies against the COVID-19 pandemic globally.1 Termed the “dynamic zero-COVID policy”, mass testing, strict quarantine protocols, and movement controls had aimed to bring COVID-19 outbreaks under control before they could spread.2 This approach proved highly effective: from Jan 22, 2020, until Nov 1, 2022, per million population, China recorded a cumulative 726 COVID-19 cases and 3·9 deaths, compar...

Gaining a better understanding of and improving outcomes for sepsis are the focus of Flavia Machados career. Speaking to The Lancet Respiratory Medicine in her office in São Paulo Hospital (São Paulo, Brazil) she explains, “It is absolutely critical that all health-care workers understand that the patient they have in front of them could have sepsis, and in most cases there is a critical 1 h window for starting antibiotic therapy. We must also continue to educate the public about this killer...