PHA-Exchange> BMJ: Journal articles irrelevant to developing countries?

[Claudio]

> BMJ 2004;329:1429-1430 (18 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7480.1429
> http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc
> Politics and Health
 
> Transatlantic divide in publication of content relevant to de-
> veloping countries.
> 
> Asad J Raja, Mohammed Bhai professor1, Peter A Singer, Sun Life
> financial chair and director.
> Correspondence to: A J Raja
> mailto:Asad.Raja at akhskenya.org
> 
> Although 112 countries now receive 2200 medical journals free or
> at reduced prices, improving access to information on obesity is
> of little value to physicians treating patients dying of malnu-
> trition. Ninety per cent of the US$70bn (38bn; E54bn) spent an-
> nually on health research is focused on the diseases of 10% of
> the world's population.
> http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc#REF1 [1]
 
> Researchers in eight industrialised countries produce almost 85%
> of the world's leading science; 163 countries, including most of
> the developing world, account for less than 2.5%.
> http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc#REF2 [2] 
 
> Less than 8% of articles published in the six leading tropical
> medicine journals in 2000-2 were generated exclusively by scien-
> tists from developing countries.
> http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc#REF3 [3]
 
> Medical journals cannot single handedly right these inequities,
> but they have an important role to play. The BMJ's ethics com-
> mittee identified publication of content relating to developing
> countries as an important ethical issue to examine. Our objec-
> tives were to review the relevance of the contents of four lead-
> ing medical journals to developing countries, compare the jour-
> nals, and observe trends.
 
> Comment
> This study shows a transatlantic divide in publication of arti-
> cles relevant to problems of developing countries: UK journals
> contained more such articles than did US journals. The results
> may have differed if the study had been done over a longer pe-
> riod of time. In particular, the publication of theme issues
> might affect a journal's numbers. None of the journals had a
> theme issue on global health during 2002 or 2003, although the
> BMJ had one in January 2002 on "Global voices on the AIDS catas-
> trophe," possibly inflating its numbers. An earlier study con-
> ducted during the first eight months of 2001 showed similar re-
> sults for three of the journals, although in that dataset the
> distinction between the BMJ and the two US journals was less
> pronounced.
> http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc#REF4 [4]
> JAMA had a theme issue on global health in June 2004, perhaps
> signalling an improvement in its numbers beyond the period of
> this study.
> http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/329/7480/1429?etoc#REF5 [5]
> 
> What is already known on this topic
> 
> The content of medical journals vastly under-represents the dis-
> eases affecting populations in developing countries
> 
> What this study adds
> 
> A "transatlantic divide" exists compared with two leading US
> medical journals, two leading UK medical journals publish much
> more content relevant to developing countries
> 
> Hopefully we will see this transatlantic gap close. We recommend
> audit of leading medical journals at regular intervals for con-
> tent relevant to developing countries and publication of the re-
> sults.
> ________________________________________________________________