Panorama tonight focussed on the manufacture of surgical instruments. Their main points were that some instruments manufactured for the world in Pakistan may be substandard and made under poor labour conditions, involving child labour.
The programme itself would have benefitted from two seperate editions to tackle the two separate issues. I am involved in raising the awareness of poor labour conditions and have written (with my colleague who was interviewed and was expected to be in the programme) an academic paper on this here. More information on the subject is available by following the links on the Medical Ethical and Fair Trade Organisation's website here.
The programme appeared to contain a frank admission that children are involved in the manufacture of surgical instruments in Pakistan and also that instruments labelled as made in Germany may in fact have been made in Pakistan.
As the two problems were combined into one programme, little time was left for solutions.
It is time that those involved in healthcare started to ask more questions about the origin of their instruments. There is more on this in the paper linked to above (with a focus on dentistry).
This blog focuses on dentistry. Articles on leadership and innovation etc. will now be posted to our sister blog at Milford (http://milforduk.wordpress.com) Paul Kelly also works as a locum dentist. Details for this are on the Dental Business Innovation website (see link in side bar). We also run training courses for dental teams in the areas of leadership, innovation and business skills, and these are all detailed on our website www. milford-uk.com You can follow me on Twitter @paulkelly2012
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