Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international medical humanitarian organization, has been providing an annual list of the “Top Ten” humanitarian crises since 1998 in an effort to generate greater awareness of the magnitude and severity of crises that may or may not be reflected in media accounts.
 

In a year where most of the media has been focusing on the American elections, these are the ten Most unreported humantiarian stories of 2008…
 

Somalia’s Humanitarian Catastrophe Worsens
Beyond the International Spotlight, Critical Health Needs in Myanmar Remain Unmet
Health Crisis Sweeps Zimbabwe as Violence and Economic Collapse Spread
Civilians Trapped as War Rages in Eastern Congo
Millions of …read more

So, after months and months of endless campaign coverage, the end is in sight.
Tomorrow America votes and a new president will be elected.
But tomorrow’s election is not just about whether McCain or Obama wins.
There are also a number of important health initiatives on various State ballots. Here’s just a few of them…
Washington has Measure 1000, also known as The Washington Death with Dignity Act, on the ballot. It’s an initiative that asks whether to allow dying patients to get a prescription for medicine to commit suicide.
Arizona has Proposition 101 which looks at freedom of choice in health care. This initiative, …read more

Messy? You’re a lefty. A neatnik? Welcome to the Right.
Can someone’s political leaning be determined by how messy their office and bedrooms are ?
Researchers of a controversal new study about to be published in The Journal of Political Psychology say yes.
The study, which included surveys and room inspections of 76 college students and 94 professionals ranging from realtors to architects, found that…
“…the bedrooms and offices of liberals, who are generally thought of as open, tend to be colorful and awash in books about travel, ethnicity, feminism and music, along with music CDs covering folk, classic and modern rock, as well …read more

Today is Blog Action Day, a day when bloggers throughout the world join together and post about a common topic, hoping to activate, inform, and increase awareness of important world issues.
This year Blog Action Day focuses on Poverty.
Here at Healthbolt, instead of writing paragraphs about poverty, I decided to provide a link to a place where, with the use of our brains and the click of our mouse, we can ensure that money is being donated to people and places in great need.
So please, take a some time out of your busy schedules and visit this site. And get clicking…
FreeRice
                             
For …read more

Ah, national conventions. Those magical times where smarmy politicians down their vodka and tonics and fantasize about what Sarah Palin looks like spread out on one of her bear-skin rugs.
C’mon, people, you know there is some serious partying going on at these things.
But who’s having the most fun? At one time, conventional wisdom might have pointed to the Dems. Not so much due to their star-power and celeb-heavy support system (though that surely helps), but because their convention was held in the high altitude haven of Denver, Colorado. Every fool knows that drinking in the thin air will lead to …read more

With the Democratic National Convention this week and the Republican National Convention next week, it’s almost impossible to avoid all the political talk, comments, and advertisements.
So I’ve decided if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them.
In the spirit of providing fair and balanced (isn’t that what all the news channels are claiming they are doing) coverage, here’s Healthbolt’s list of healthcare election resources…
WebMD claims that they have cut through the clutter with their Health Matters in the 2008 Election. It’s a comprehensive report on both Obama’s and McCain’s Health Platforms, a side-by-side comparison chart of the where the …read more

No loan comes without conditions. You know what I mean. You’re required to make regular payments on time, pay interest, and are charged late payment fees etc when you’re not following the rules.
Well, it seems that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is no different. They, too, attach conditions on their loans to recipient countries. Conditions such as the country being required to reduce or limit their education, social services, and health expenditure in an effort to get inflation in check. The idea behind this is that, despite these cutbacks in services, once the country’s inflation has been controlled and economy …read more

Japanese people may smoke too much and work too much. But on the whole they really can’t be accused of being overweight or metabo as the Japanese prefer to call it.
The Japanese goverment, however, thinks otherwise and has embarked on a mandatory campaign to slim it’s nation down. Two months ago they passed a national law that requires all companies and local governments to measure the waists of their employees (including family members) aged 40 to 74 as part of their annual checkups. With almost half the Japanese population fitting into this category, that makes an awful lot of waists …read more

Please watch, at least until you get to where you find out what IT is.
IT might look like a political video but it’s not really.
IT is something that we all need to be aware of.
IT can strick any of us, at any time.
IT is growing.
Can we stop IT ?

We’ve been talking quite a bit about the intriguing topic of longevity lately. And if living to a ripe old age is on your “To Do” list, you may want to consider gaining a higher education.
So, does that mean those with a college degree will live longer than their less-educated counterparts? Perhaps.
Epidemiologists from the American Cancer Society and scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) teamed up to analyze the data and death certificate information of more than three and a half million deaths which occurred between 1993 and 2001. During …read more