The implications of the causal and ubiquitous use, by doctors health-workers and politicians, of the word 'patient' are here discussed. Given that the many implications of this noun do not include health or normality (rather the contrary), it is questionable who, if anyone, profits from its indiscriminate use--and its use, even, at all.

Angola’s difficulties in achieving macro-economic stability and economic liberalization have serious implications for private-sector development. Hyperinflation, and frequent policy reversal, constrain and distort investment in both the informal and formal parts of the private sector. But macro-economic instability arises in part out of mechanisms that subsidize powerful oligopolies, enabling t...

abstract objective: to investigate the anesthesia-postoperative awakening time (at) of hepatitis- related cirrhosis patients and their relations to grading scores, portal venous pressure (pvp), prealbumin (pa), and age, to predict postoperative at and provide a basis for adjustment of anesthetic doses during operation. methods: atotal of 71 patients with hepatic cirrhosis and hypersplenism at a...

sweden and spain experiment with different provider models to reform healthcare provision. both models have in common that they extend the role of the for-profit sector in healthcare. as the analysis of saltman and duran demonstrates, privatisation is an ambiguous and contested strategy that is used for quite different purposes. in our comment, we emphasize that their analysis leaves questions ...

in this paper data were collected from 120 farmers in north khorassan province for the two periods (2005-2007) in order to survey the role of rain-fed lentil risk profile for designing an insurance model. to evaluate looses of each risk, risk frequency, risk impact criteria’s as well as risk matrix were used. results showed that low risk was the largest risk area. during study period, a decreas...