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Maarten van der Heijden

@mrvanderheijden.bsky.social
4.2K followers 1.4K following 34 posts

Contains multitudes. Global health lawyer and advisor. PhD candidate at LSHTM researching the global politics of the use of antibiotics. 🌍💊 Consultant at WHO + FAO + WOAH, ex-MSF

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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Grateful to Annie Kelly and The Guardian for the opportunity to publish this opinion piece alongside the testimonies of those who have dared to bear witness to the assault on healthcare they experienced in Gaza. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
‘They forced me to stand for hours in the cold, arms raised and shackled’: eight Gaza doctors on their Israeli prison ordeal
Senior doctors and surgeons describe the torture, starvation, humiliation and denial of medical care they endured while being held without charge
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
It is often assumed that international law provides an absolute prohibition on attacks on healthcare facilities in war. It does not. But it should. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
theguardian.com
The playbook for bombing hospitals in war: deny, deflect, justify. The law must close these loopholes | Maarten van der Heijden
Cynical actors exploit the legal ambiguities around targeting healthcare facilities, as seen in Gaza. Unequivocal protections are needed
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SCPA Misfit @mochamisfit.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
We are in a constitutional crisis. Thank you congressmen Murphy and Raskin.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
"I knew a premature VHF diagnosis could cause panic and have profound political implications." – A very strong piece in NEJM by Dr JP Sibomana on the personal and political complexity of diagnosing Rwanda’s first Marburg outbreak. doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp2413951
doi.org
Fight or Flight — Facing the Marburg Outbreak in Rwanda | NEJM
Having diagnosed two ICU patients with the first known cases of Marburg virus disease in Rwanda, a physician must prioritize limiting spread, despite pleas for transfer from the patients’ families.
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Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
We now have 3 starter packs for Global Health Nerds! go.bsky.app/DgwRPwD go.bsky.app/RScFWyt go.bsky.app/ADqkPeH Will keep updating!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Progress amnesia? 🧠
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Fantastic work!!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Who says that? Nobody oposes alcohol-free beer overall. Health agencies just ask for similar advertisement standards so as to not expose children/youth to alcohol brand names, and do further research on impact. The author is some libertarian misinformer paid by Big Alcohol...
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 14/11/2024
Right!!! Freetown is calling you. 😉 This was even right after the annual beach clean up. oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu/eubeachclean...
oceans-and-fisheries.ec.europa.eu
EU - Sierra Leone Beach Clean-Up 2024
EU - Sierra Leone Beach Clean-Up 2024
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
imagine if you could imagine things and then they were just like you imagined. well, now we all get to live there -- or else
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 13/11/2024
Thanks Anita!!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
CHAI wrote a good article on the causes of the shortages of BPG that partially caused this or at least hamper treatment. academic.oup.com/inthealth/ar...
academic.oup.com
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
ELS is ‘experimental lab sample’, basically means improve the compound in the lab
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
(5/5) ⏰⏰⏰ We need to talk more about access to asthma medication, and access to treatment for NCDs as a whole. ⏰⏰⏰ #AsthmaCrisis #AccessToMedicines #NCDs
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
(4/5) Data does show severe asthma rates of around 25.6% in sub-Saharan Africa, with 4.6% of cases remaining uncontrolled despite high-intensity treatment. In these cases only biologicals could help, but universal access to those remains far away. www.jaci-global.org/article/S277...
jaci-global.org
DEFINE_ME
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
(3/5) Even in the USA 1 in 3 patients are estimated struggled to access their inhalers, but also in India where the majority is produced they are not affordable for all. Most cases I heard about were about young people in sub-Saharan Africa. But there is really little data there on access.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
(2/5) Inhalers are costly due to monopolistic pricing, patents on drug-device combos (device-hops), and regulatory hurdles that block cheaper generics. Recent reforms in inhalers to eliminate ozone-depleting propellants did not help either. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Patents and regulatory exclusivities on inhalers for asthma and COPD, 1986-2020
Inhalers are the mainstay of treatment for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. These products face limited generic competition in the US and remain expensive. To better understand the st...
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
(1/5) The past months, I’ve heard many stories of people losing family members to asthma because they couldn’t access medication. Asthma inhaler prices were already high, but have increased by 2-5x over the last years in many countries. www.bbc.com/news/videos/... www.voanews.com/a/nigerians-...
bbc.com
Cost of asthma inhalers: ‘People shouldn’t be paying to breathe’
Some inhalers in Nigeria have doubled or tripled in price since last year, leaving many struggling.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Consider yourself surprised! FAO usually does not welcome or push so much as a technical organisation, but it does significant work on the food safety of these products. UNEP wrote a report about the environmental promise of these products, FAO co-authored: www.unep.org/resources/wh...
unep.org
What's Cooking? An assessment of potential impacts of selected novel alternatives to conventional animal products
The food systems are responsible for about 30% of the current anthropogenic GHG emissions, and animal products account for almost 60% of those emissions. There is a need to change the way we produce a...
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Have been dabbling a bit outside of the global health/medicines sphere lately. This Thursday I am speaking about countries' legislative frameworks for cell-based meat at the International Bar Association on behalf of the FAO. 🧫🥩https://www.ibanet.org/conference-details/CONF2628
ibanet.org
Cultivated meat: opportunities and challenges | International Bar Association
A webinar presented by the IBA Agriculture and Food Section Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown or cell-based meat, introduces a groundbreaking approach to meat production, poised to tackle the c...
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Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
And if you plan to host global health events and meetings, here is a list of visa friendly countries communities.springernature.com/posts/visa-f...
communities.springernature.com
Visa-friendly venues for global health meetings
Conference organizers have an obligation to host meetings in locations that are not visa-hostile. Are there ‘visa-friendly’ options that conference organizers should be considering? This crowd-sourced...
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
@jessicareinisch.bsky.social So cool you’re researching UNRRA! I’m preparing a short piece on the role UNRRA/WHO in the local production of antibiotics atm :) Would love to discuss!
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Joyce Chaplin @joycechaplin.bsky.social · 08/11/2024
Hello new followers from that bleak gray place! Reposting my first post on this site: a cyanometer, the instrument Alexander von Humboldt (among others) used to determine how blue any sky actually was
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Anita Williams @catanita.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Hey #AMR people - am wanting to broaden the capture of the feed for other languages so if you know the key words for antimicrobial resistance in another language, please drop it in the replies below!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Would love to be added as well!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Would love to be added as well Lance!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
(3/3) For English/German there's this nice list from the Wellcome Trust's Reframing Resistance study with the terms used in news outlets.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
(2/3) Geneesmiddelenresistentie (drug resistance); multiresistente bacteriën (multi-resistant bacteria); medicijnresistente bacteriën (medicine-resistant bacteria); superbugs (superbugs); superresistente bacteriën (super-resistant bacteria/superbugs).
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
(1/3) Great initiative! Thanks Anita. For Dutch it often become two words, I do not know if that works: antibioticaresistentie (antibiotic resistance); antimicrobiële resistentie (antimicrobial resistance); bacteriële resistentie (bacterial resistance)
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Would love to join! I mainly work on AMR law + policy at WHO and FAO.
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James Packard Love @jamielove.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Natuure: 2020 Nobel Prize winners Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier ask that two of their EU CRISPR patents be cancelled. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
CRISPR Nobelists surrender their own European patents - Nature Biotechnology
A strategic move by lawyers acting for Doudna and Charpentier is the latest twist in the battleground for CRISPR–Cas9 technology.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Interesting, I will be following from a policy perspective!
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Old definitions of 'drugs'/'medicines' form a problem for controlling antimicrobial use. Two main Qs are: (1) Does this definition include medicated feed for animals? (Probably) (2) Does this definition use the use of mediciens as growth promotors? (Probably not) Out of scope = uncontrolled use
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Pictures of a stroll along Lumley Beach in Freetown after giving a workshop on reforming the governance of veterinary medicines for One Health Day last week.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Thanks Joseph, I appreciate it and look forward to engaging with the med hist community more. : )
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Madhu Pai, MD, PhD @madhupai.bsky.social · 11/11/2024
Updated Global Health Nerds starter pack Will create part 2! go.bsky.app/DgwRPwD
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Chris Houston @chrishouston.ca · 11/11/2024
Citing @jburnmurdoch.bsky.social’s Tweet from last month, Twitter is losing users in a massive way.
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Thanks! It's rather anthropological archival (using WHO/UN historic documents actively reinterpreted to serve present agendas).
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Hi would love to be on the list, I'm working on an ethnography of rational use of medicines at the moment and would really enjoy some more exchanges here : )
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Hi Marie, I'm working at the intersection of anthropology and global health policy and would love to be added to the list.
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Roojin Habibi روژین (she/elle) @roojinhabibi.org · 10/11/2024
A starting line up of global health folks who work across law, policy and ethics. There are many others to add - please share widely and suggest additions! go.bsky.app/Qj9GcA1
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Back from Sierra Leone, where we launched AMR campaigns on TV/radio. Yet WhatsApp groups are the main news source. Quality reporting mixes there with anti-chemo content, making posting a dilemma... This new information age + attention economy is an unprecedented challenge. Glad to join #bsky
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Just started here, this is a great resource! Thanks @madhupai.bsky.social
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Maarten van der Heijden @mrvanderheijden.bsky.social · 10/11/2024
Thank you Pai, this is great. I am also exploring bsky as part of the X-odus and would love to join.
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