Global Health
Advances in ear and hearing telehealth
Telehealth in ear (or tele-otology/tele-audiology) and hearing care has steadily increased as an area of both research and clinical interest over the past 15 years [1]. Driven by rapid advances in connected technologies and wide-ranging potential use cases, telehealth had...
Head and neck cancer deaths to cost $535 billion by 2030
More than 500,000 people across the globe will die this year from head and neck cancer, which is the sixth most common cancer in the world and comprises malignancies of the nose, mouth, throat, larynx, and neck. Assuming current trends...
Virtual educational outreach in the COVID-19 era
Existing surgical outreach programmes to developing countries have been severely curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This has impacted on opportunities for otolaryngologists from the USA and from other developed countries to contribute to education and training of otolaryngologists in developing...
Changing the face of global health: short-term surgical trips
With the growth of global health awareness, global surgery has emerged as a key focus area. This article examines short-term surgical trips (STSTs) as one of the ways used to address some of the gaps in global surgery. It demonstrates...
COVID-19: UCT-Africa Virtual ENT transcends academic silos
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global catastrophe with far-reaching consequences felt across many fronts around the world. One such aspect is the training of the future generation of ENT surgeons. With routine elective activity curtailed, academic conferences cancelled, and...
#BecauseIhearIlive – an international message from Smiling Crocodile
There are 34 million children worldwide afflicted by disabling hearing loss, 60% of whom are suffering from hearing loss due to preventable causes [1]. This article is an account of the Smiling Crocodile Charity, founded in 2009 by Dagmar Herrmannová,...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ear health in the 2020s
The world is in the midst of a pandemic, and global health is severely threatened by this novel coronavirus which has caused over three million infections of COVID-19 and claimed more than 228,000 lives to date*. Societies and health systems...
Charitable hearing care in Pakistan: establishing the IMRA Cochlear Implant Programme and Middle Ear Project
IMRA, the International Medical Relief Agency, is a registered charity providing volunteer-delivered cochlear implant and major ear surgery to children and adults in Pakistan. Established in 2001 by UK-based ENT surgeons led by Mr Haroon Khan, its primary aim is...
Cambodian Children Surgical Centre: a junior’s perspective
The Children’s Surgical Centre (CSC) is a Non-Governmental-Organisation (NGO) hospital situated in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia. CSC was developed for landmine victims over 20 years ago by Dr Jim Gollogly after the dark period under the Pol Pot...
In conversation with Robin Youngs
Members of ENT UK (The British Association of Otolaryngologists and Head and Neck Surgeons) have a long tradition of humanitarian work in countries in Africa and Asia (see article with Professor Davis Howard in previous issue for example). The ENT...
Prof ED Kitcher
Much has been said of the paucity of ENT Services in Africa [1]. Whilst Ghana has always been at the forefront of healthcare in Sub Saharan Africa, its ENT and allied services were somewhat suboptimal in the 1980s. This article,...
Breaking barriers in Uganda: the story of Elaine Mukaaya
More than 9% of sub-Saharan Africa’s one billion people live with disabling hearing loss, with children having among the highest rates of childhood hearing loss in the world [1]. Sadly, in concordance with the inverse care law – proposed by...
