Author: Anja Kučević

Vincent Willem Van Gogh was a Dutch painter who lived in the late 19^th century and is generally considered to be the greatest artist after Rembrandt van Rijn. In one decade of his short life, he created about 2,100 artworks, mostly landscapes, still life, portraits and self-portraits. His most famous painting called “Starry night” very well represents his unique artistic style, characterized by bold colours put together with dramatic brush work that greatly paved the way to modern art.

Unfortunately, Van Gogh was not that successful in his career, selling only one artwork during his life, which burdened the artist mentally and caused him severe depression. His mental health was very unstable as the time passed and he suffered severe psychotic episodes with delusions which led to many hospitalisations, but without any improvement because of the limited therapeutic options. Van Gogh´s mental health also affected his physical health, he starved himself and drank heavily most of the time. As mental disorders were even more stigmatized in the past as they are today, he was considered a madman and a failure. His depression took its toll at the very end of his life and he committed suicide at only 37 years old. After his death, he came to be seen as a misunderstood genius in the public eye and finally received well needed recognition.

Flashback to September 3, 1928. On an ordinary autumnal morning in foggy London, Alexander Fleming is returning to the Laboratory of St. Mary’s Hospital, ready to tackle the tasks he left before going on holiday. Firstly, quick and easy one- sorting the petri dishes, with, well, as Fleming thought, probably nothing interesting in them, just a bunch of life- threatening strains of bacteria that are currently killing millions of children and adults across the globe. But he was wrong, today was the day for “Eureka!”. On one dish was something unusual- it was dotted with colonies of growing bacteria, save for the one area where a blob of mold was growing. The zone immediately around the mold was clear, as if the mold had secreted something that inhibited bacterial growth. Today, we know that the mold was a rare strain of Penicillium notatum that secreted penicillin, very unstable substance at first, but many optimisations later, one of the greatest discoveries and advances in therapeutic medicine. The dawn of antibiotic era has begun.

On the 25th of April, the World Malaria Day 2022 took place. This year’s theme was “Harness innovation to reduce the malaria disease burden and save lives“, since the main goal of the World Health Organization (WHO) was to highlight the necessity of research and development for new therapeutic strategies to eradicate the disease. Today, malaria is entirely preventable and curable disease if the symptoms are recognized in earlier stages, but in some cases, it is unfortunately not possible. Therefore, the estimated number of new cases in 2020 was 241 million, and within that number there were 627 thousand malaria-related deaths in 85 countries. The region at highest risk is the sub-Saharan Africa, where more than two thirds of deaths were reported among the children under the age of 5. Despite the promising and steady advances in controlling the disease between 2000 and 2015, in recent years there was an evident set-back especially in the number of preventable deaths. What are the causes of this stagnation and what can be done to prevent the spread of this highly contagious disease?