BACKGROUND In the early stages of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, border control measures were taken by quarantine stations to block the entry of infected individuals into Japan and community containment measures were implemented to prevent the spreading. The objectives of this study were to describe these measures and the characteristics of infected individuals, and to assess the measures' effectiveness...

BACKGROUND In 1999 the Communicable Disease Prevention Law of Japan was completely revised into the "New" Infectious Disease Control Law, which reiterated the importance of surveillance and information dissemination and re-organized the surveillance system. This paper is an attempt to illustrate the potential impact of the new surveillance system through a description of the existing surveillan...

© 2004 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors We applaud the Executive of the Section on Emergency Medicine of the Ontario Medical Association for their call to action. We support many of the points made in their position statement but ultimately believe that a law for the mandatory reporting of gunshot wounds will do more harm than good. Ovens describes the support the position statemen...

Medical ethics is a realm where four important subjects of philosophy, medicine, theology and law are covered. Physicians and philosophers cooperation in this area will have great efficiency in the respective ethical rules formation. In addition to respect the autonomy of the patient, physician's obligation is to ensure that the medical intervention has benefit for the patient and the harm is m...

Since the introduction of mandatory helmet legislation (MHL) in Australia, debate on the effect of MHL on cyclist head injuries has been ongoing. The debate sometimes revolves around the statistical methodology used to assess intervention effectiveness. Supporters of rescinding the MHL thereby encouraging cyclists to ride without helmets, regularly dismiss statistical evaluations as being flawe...

Mid-Winter Meeting (Family Law: Medical and Counselling Records panel). Thanks are extended to my co-panellists, the Honourable Mr. Justice Peter Martin and Ms. Danielle Aubry, Executive Director of Calgary Communities Against Sexual Abuse, and to the anonymous reviewer for this Journal, for their helpful comments. Wayne N. Renke is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law, University of Al...

Patients expect to receive safe, predictable and high-quality care delivered by competent professionals. Thus, it has become important to provide specific training in existing and new modalities and prove on-going clinical expertise. Hospital credentialing is the process by which the competence of a doctor is determined by the hospital management. In Australia, radiologists participate in a man...

The "first" and "second" epidemics of AIDS are considered to be the spread of HIV infection and subsequent development of AIDS cases; what has been termed the "third epidemic" is the widespread economic, social, and cultural reaction to the disease, raising crucial social, humanitarian, and legal issues. This article deals with four questions arising from these issues: (1) What is the best publ...

OBJECTIVES Using opinion data from experts, we examined the context of the argument for mandatory testing of psychiatric patients. METHODS Vignettes were distributed to experts on HIV and mental illness. Respondents were asked to provide appropriateness ratings for different hypothetical clinical decisions regarding HIV management. RESULTS Respondents were reluctant to impose testing withou...