United Kingdom
I write. I write a lot. And I've been writing for over 20 years. My articles encompass science, technology, international development and business. I've written for a range of publications too, from WHO Bulletin and The Lancet to the Guardian, IP-Watch, Health Policy Watch, The Economist, SciDev.net, BMJ, BBC News and Nature.
I work on freelance commissions and generate original stories. I conduct investigative reporting as well as contract publishing and medical writing. I write features and interviews, contribute articles to conference newspapers, supplements and copy for internal magazines and websites.
Subjects I've covered are wide – anything from insulin and fake news on vaccines to effective air ambulance repatriations. More recently I have written about treatments for cancer and other non-communicable diseases in resource poor settings, access to health technologies, medicine prices, cross-border healthcare, the opioid crisis, emergency medicine and antimicrobial resistance. I interview a range of actors from policymakers to research scientists and health practitioners.
Below is a tiny selection of the articles I've written.
Sometimes the vials are filled with dirty water. Occasionally they contain saline and a tiny amount of antibiotic, so as not to infect the site of the vaccination and draw attention to its true ingredients. But however good or bad the disguise, the fact is that these "vaccines" will actually have no effect at all.
Courtesy of Christian Ntizimira Christian Ntizimira is a Masters Candidate at Harvard Medical School, department of Global Health and Social Medicine and the executive secretary of the Rwanda Palliative Care and Hospice Organisation. This year he became World Cancer Congress Regional Lead, Africa, for the Union for International Cancer Control.
Tanusree Chaudhuri, 38, was pregnant with her first child when her supervisor told her she would have to give up her dreams. She was doing a doctorate in computational biology and aspired to improve people's health. "He told me 'you are married now, why do you need a PhD?
Hospitals in the Indian state of Rajasthan will be assessed next month to gauge whether upgrades, paid for with a new international innovative financing model, have brought them up to the new government quality standards. At least 92 small private healthcare organisations (SHCOs) - small private rural and urban hospitals - are being upgraded this year, and 360 in total over three years.
article published in September 2017
Hidden amongst the thousands of Facebook pages given over to holiday snaps and gossip are groups of patients who have hepatitis C, a disease that affects more than 70 million worldwide and kills around 400,000 people a year.
A case at the High Court in India set for 15 December could decide whether a patent on some of the most important drugs to fight hepatitis C should be removed. It is one of many attempts to challenge patents on hepatitis C drugs in various countries around the world and serves as an opportunity to learn more about the group leading the legal case.
Access to powerful painkillers, usually based on opioid substances, is a crucial part of progress towards tackling NCDs, according to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a UN quasi-judicial body that is concerned with enforcing three global drug control conventions.
Swiss drug firm Novartis has been accused of abusing an award system designed to encourage innovation for diseases that mainly affect developing countries. Tatum Anderson reports.
MODERN, Western medicine tends to pooh-pooh its herbal cousin. It is true that synthetic pharmaceuticals are purer, more reliable and often more effective than herbs. But many of them have herbal origins, and the sight of pharmacists botanising (collecting herbs from the countryside for sale as medicine) was common in Europe within living memory.
Pain relief is often taken for granted in the Western world, but in about 150 countries the use of morphine is severely restricted. Tatum Anderson investigates how this has come about, and what steps are being taken to stop patients living and dying in extreme pain.
Governments are considering which financial incentives will be the best to boost research and development for much needed new antibiotic drugs. Tatum Anderson reports.
Countries are beginning to notice an increase in Chinese citizens looking for healthcare services abroad, as Tatum Anderson reports Around 483,000 people travelled from China for medical tourism in 2015, spending US$6.3 billion on treatment and US$3.4 billion on related travel and accommodation, according to ChinaMediworld.com.
The first biosimilar of the blockbuster breast cancer drug trastuzumab is being prepared for launch in United States, following a decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve it earlier this month. The product, Ogivri, has been created by a joint venture between US Mylan and Indian company Biocon.
Several campaigns and initiatives are underway in Europe and the USA by doctors hoping to improve services and care for patients with chronic pain. Tatum Anderson reports.
News: Business A plant in Uganda hopes to sell cut-price drugs by taking advantage of exemptions from rules that protect patents. But its operators face major obstacles, as Tatum Anderson reports. President Yoweri Museveni gives a thumbs up to Uganda's latest drug venture.
In the shadow of Mount Kenya, traditional healer Jack Githae enters what he describes as his 'natural pharmacy'. It's a dense area of bush where elephants occasionally wander packed with a range of plants and trees from the African olive to the prickly euphorbia.
This is the fourth edition of the Rough Guide's Women Travel anthology, and it weighs in now at 700 pages, with stories and reports from more than 60 countries, written by some 80 women. The route is simple, running alphabetically from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, so readers dipping in and out of the book can choose the country whose window they wish to look through.
Open-source drug development involves open data sharing, collaboration, and results sharing. The aim is to produce new drugs for neglected diseases. But can it work? Tatum Anderson reports.
A charity is to raise £50million for vaccines in undeveloped countries by approaching the financial markets. The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm) will be issuing a bond via HSBC to raise the sum. The bond will be redeemed after five years at which point it will also pay out a one-off coupon of 16.2%.
by for Intellectual Property Watch The problem of fake medicines is a big one. But precisely how big? The problem is, when reporting numbers, news stories, reports and institutions have historically bundled the different kinds of medicines together, says an expert at the WHO. Available only for IP-Watch Subscribers.
Major pharmaceutical companies are often happy to donate their medicines for free to the developing world, but that might mean they are getting off cheaply in meeting their social obligations, while still charging high prices for patented drugs, Tatum Anderson reports
For the people in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, a new meningitis vaccine offers hope of an escape from one of the world's deadliest, most disabling and infectious diseases. So there is little wonder that the queues were enormous when a pilot project for the MenAfriVac vaccine got underway in the three West African countries in recent weeks.
HepC medical tourism. What you do get when you cross a millionaire Argentinian football star, Egyptian pyramids, a government department and a pharmaceutical company? The launch of a medical tourism campaign, of course. At least that's what happened earlier this year when international soccer superstar Lionel Messi of FC Barcelona and the Argentinian national football team visited Egypt to promote the launch of Tour n' Cure, a medical tourism initiative.
Tatum Anderson investigates how a new bill from the Ministries of Health and Tourism seeks to improve treatment for Israeli patients It's not just the world-famous therapeutic spas on the Dead Sea, or even the promise of post-treatment trips to biblical sites that have made Israel one of the world's most popular medical tourism destinations.
Despite a massive worldwide push to improve access to contraceptives, generic manufacturers say they're not yet getting a good share of the pie. The use of family-planning products has rocketed in recent years, as more women around the world - especially in low and middle-income countries - choose to have smaller families.
by for Intellectual Property Watch An African medicines agency, the continent's first super-regulator, could be approved as soon as next year. Available only for IP-Watch Subscribers. Please login or subscribe to read the full story. Tatum Anderson may be reached at [email protected] "Enter The African Medicines Agency, Continent's First Super-Regulator?"
by for Intellectual Property Watch With the looming threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), there is growing pressure to use vaccines because they obviate the need to prescribe antibiotics in the first place. Available only for IP-Watch Subscribers. Please login or subscribe to read the full story. Tatum Anderson may be reached at [email protected]
The WHO last week announced plans to explore options for prequalifying insulin, a process that already assesses the quality, safety and efficacy of medicinal products, such as tuberculosis and malaria drugs. The WHO is considering whether to extend the prequalification process to manufacturers creating me-too versions of insulins, more commonly known as biosimilars.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), a group of conditions that can result in heart attacks and strokes, is the world's number one killer, accounting for one-third of deaths throughout the world, according to research released recently (17 May) by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
A look into centres of medical excellence opening ‘outposts’ in different countries
13 October 2016 Tatum Anderson looks at global efforts to enhance hospital pricing transparency In March this year, a group of 11 organisations - including one that represents US pensioners - wrote to the US National Institutes of Health, asking why a late-stage prostate cancer drug costs as much as four times more in the US than it does elsewhere.
by for Intellectual Property Watch Bangalore-based Biocon may become the first Indian company to offer a biosimilar insulin in Europe. And the patent and pricing story is interesting. Available only for IP-Watch Subscribers. Please login or subscribe to read the full story. Tatum Anderson may be reached at [email protected]
The wooden summerhouse at Ristinge in the south-west was simple and homely, with a maze of small rooms. But no one spent much time inside, apart from to sleep and prepare food. Outside, a garden of evergreens and rosehip bushes led to a beach just a minute's walk away; two hours from Copenhagen, we were lying on white sand.
The term "Open" in science is all the rage these days. The Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) has posted a Malaria Box, containing over 400 compounds that might be effective against malaria to almost 200 research groups in two years.
Article 58, a process introduced by the European Commission to help speed up the time low and middle-income countries take to approve new drugs, could be in for a massive overhaul. A revamp has been proposed because it is underused - just a handful of products have gone through the Article 58 process since its launch in 2004.