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About 400 medicines are in short supply in Australia. Of these, about 30 are categorised as critical. These are ones with a life-threatening or serious impact on patients, and with no readily available substitutes.
Culturally responsive management of asthma during pregnancy in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women needs some serious attention if we are to improve birth outcomes.
Lower back pain is a common presentation in general practice, and with many treatments available, knowing which ones are effective — and which are not — can guide better care.
Children in care need a streamlined, consistent health system regardless of where they live or how frequently their circumstances change.
A multinational cohort study led by Australian researchers finds no clear evidence that prenatal exposure to smoking cessation pharmacotherapies causes congenital malformations in babies
Across Australia, communities are grappling with climate disasters that are striking more frequently and with greater intensity. Bushfires, floods and cyclones are no longer one-off events. And this pattern is predicted to worsen due to climate change.
Injectable medications originally developed for the treatment of diabetes are also effective for weight loss, and have surged in popularity for this purpose around the world.
This week, the MJA published new evidence of the national prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV). The survey of a representative sample of 8500 Australians adds new knowledge about the prevalence and nature of physical, psychological and sexual violence between intimate partners aged 16 years and over in Australia. The study confirms that substantial proportions of Australians have experienced physical violence (29.1%), sexual violence (11.7%), and psychological violence (41.2%) by an intimate partner. These findings are relevant to a range of policy makers and sector stakeholders, and are significant for medical practitioners and regulatory bodies.
Melioidosis is endemic in Cairns, with the number of cases increasing since 2015 (here and here). This year, however, there has been an extraordinary season, with more than four times the number of cases in Cairns already than in any prior year. One hundred cases of melioidosis have been reported in the Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Service from 1 January to 13 April 2025.
