eight london hospitals are outsourcing transcription to india, with comical, yet potentially worrisome results:

London, Aug. 19: Yet another fault has been found by British unions with the quality of outsourcing to India but this time perhaps with some justification.

Medical letters are being transcribed by secretaries in India but potentially life-threatening errors are creeping in because of insufficient knowledge of either the English language or of complicated terms, it was claimed yesterday.

It is also possible that the use of computer spell checkers is leading to some words being replaced by unlikely ones. In one example, the drug “Lansoprazole”, used to treat stomach ulcers, was transcribed as the popular holiday resort “Lanzarote”.

In another case, “phlebitis (vein inflammation) left leg” was changed to “flea bite his left leg”. And a “below knee amputation” was transcribed as “baloney amputation”. One note referred to a patient’s “cute angina” instead of “acute angina”. “Euston station tube malfunction” should have read “Eustachian tube malfunction”.

personally? i think most politicians should have their “baloney” amputated, but that’s just me. 😀

from The Telegraph.

from the Toronto Star, an article that discusses canada’s medical status quo– apparently they don’t have enough doctors.

this made me choke on my chardonnay. not enough doctors? there are one billion indians walking the earth! :p how is ANYONE lacking doctors?

is dr. sunil patel (who is quoted below) the only brown person in canada? 😉 no, that can’t be. CANADA has TEN brown legislators! so where are all the doctors? and more pressing than that, what on earth do canadian uncles and aunties brag about at parties if their kids aren’t in med school? anyone? buehler??

Canada needs to invest $1 billion over the next five years to reverse its serious shortage of doctors and ensure there will be enough health-care providers in future to reduce long waiting lists plaguing hospitals, the Canadian Medical Association says.

The association wants Ottawa to create a national health human resources reinvestment fund, which would plan for future personnel needs and “help end the health human resources boom-and-bust planning cycle,” outgoing president Dr. Sunil Patel told a news conference at the annual meeting in Toronto yesterday.

a Gandhi for our generation? this article has more:

Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, is to kick off an unarmed Palestinian movement against Israeli occupation which is being launched by a group of social and political activists in Ramallah.

Gandhi, head of the MK Gandhi Institute for non-violence in the US, will be the star attraction at three mass rallies planned in Ramallah, Abu Dis and Bethlehem on August 26.

The campaign is being organised by a group of Palestinian social and political activists in Ramallah, who have joined hands with anti-fence activists, NGOs, and Fatah activists headed by minister without portfolio and Fatah member Kadura Fares in the wake of the International Court of Justice’s ruling condemning the construction of the West Bank barrier by Israel.

and he’s not “aboot” to take it! from the TOI:

MUMBAI: Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt says he would sue for defamation a Canadian paper that has labelled him a terrorist.

Calgary Herald , a leading daily in Canada, has allegedly branded Sanjay Dutt a terrorist from India and wondered about the wisdom of allowing such elements into the country.

“It was a long half-page article ripping my reputation into bits. I’ve never been more hurt in my life,” Sanjay Dutt said from Los Angeles sounding acutely upset. He left Calgary where he was shooting for Anubhav Sinha’s Dus.

i have no idea what he may or may not be guilty of with regards to terrorism, but i DO know he is, without a shadow of a doubt, guilty of terrible highlights and horrible facial hair. click the TOI link for his pic, you’ll see.

my happiness over india-pendence day diminished after reading salon:

Aug. 15, 2004 | NEW DELHI (AP) — A bomb exploded during an Independence Day parade in India’s remote northeast on Sunday, killing at least 15 people, officials said, just an hour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to fight terrorism. The outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom was suspected of being behind the attack in Assam state and a second one later in the area, said Assam Inspector General of Police Khagen Sharma.

Dilip Saikia, a local lawmaker, said 15 people were killed in the powerful blast in the grounds of a local college in Dhemaji, where the parade was being held. Most of the dead were school children, who had come to see the parade, Saikia told The Associated Press over telephone from Dhemaji. The remote town is 1,015 miles northeast of New Delhi.

57 years later…we may be free of the brits, but we are still enslaved by hate, terror and violence. sigh.