Welcome to the Podcast of Another 15 Minutes, Health News from the Fade Library. Full links to the articles detailed can be found at www (dot) fade the blog 2 (dot) blogspot (dot)com
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National News
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Michael White: Tories call for halt to NHS permanent revolution - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
When David Cameron promised yesterday to "put GPs in the driving seat" of a new, kinder Conservative health policy his attack dogs simultaneously savaged the government's NHS failures. Labour duly retaliated in kind. Yet the striking thing about the rival health strategies is that the two main parties are closer on fundamentals than for years. In the search for "smaller but cleverer" public services that meet rising public expectations Mr Cameron is even addressing a Guardian conference on Friday.
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Tories to drop NHS targets - The Independent 23rd January 2007
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Tories pledge to ditch health targets - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
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Justine Roberts on a new baby planning service - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
If you're pregnant but too posh to shop, not to worry - help is at hand from a new service that will source the best buggy for you, decorate the nursery, and even advise on sleeping routines. For £2,500, Baby Planners promises to take care of all your pre- and post-pregnancy problems.
Well, not quite all. The swollen ankles, the cracked nipples, the birth: you'll still have to take care of those, but at least you'll not waste time fretting over whether you should get the three-in-one or the three-wheeler pushchair.
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Labour accused of bias over transport plans - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
Three-quarters of the big transport projects approved in England in the last year are in Labour-held constituencies, figures released last night show, provoking Conservative charges of political bias. The Tories said the statistics showed a pattern repeated in other areas, including more help from the national lottery and extra funding for school building in Labour areas, and reports of government "heat maps" to highlight NHS cuts in marginal constituencies.
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Women can worry about their weight and be intelligent too - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
The goal of physical and mental wellbeing has been recognised as a wise one since ancient times, says Liz Sheppard-Jones
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Doctors angry at plan to assess patients at private clinics - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
GPs will lose the right to refer NHS patients for assessment at a hospital outpatient clinic under plans that were condemned by the British Medical Association yesterday as a step too far in the creeping privatisation of the health service. The BMA drew attention to proposals designed to cut hospital waiting lists by creating a network of private centres under contract to the government that would assess and test patients before they are allowed to get treatment as hospital outpatients. The private medical chain Netcare will set up 10 centres in Cumbria and Lancashire, where the company expects to be able to deal with 60% of patients without needing to send them for an assessment by an NHS consultant.
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Fears over new NHS role for firms - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
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Michele Hanson on the positive effects owning a dog, and on gambling - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
I've been inconsistent, my tone of voice is wrong and my anxiety is rubbing off on the dogs
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Baby died 12 hours after GP said she had a cold, inquest told - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
A three-week-old baby died 12 hours after being diagnosed with a cold at an NHS walk-in centre, an inquest heard yesterday. The parents of Shelby Whitrow were given nasal drops to help her breathe, but she was found lifeless in her bed at 7am the next day. She was rushed to Bristol Royal hospital for children but was pronounced dead 30 minutes after arriving. A postmortem was unable to pinpoint the exact cause of death but experts suspect it was a respiratory virus.
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Knightley sues 'Daily Mail' for suggesting she has anorexia - The Independent 23rd January 2007
Keira Knightley, the Pirates of the Caribbean star, has launched a libel action over a newspaper story that suggested she was losing too much weight and could be anorexic. The 21-year-old actress believes the Daily Mail article suggested she had "dishonestly sought to mislead the public" over whether she has an eating disorder.
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Rogue foreign doctors 'exploiting loophole to find jobs in Britain' - The Times 23rd January 2007
Rogue doctors and thousands of other health professionals who have been struck off for misconduct in other European countries are able to work in Britain because there is no mechanism in place to warn employers. In a letter to The Times today, ten leading medical regulators have expressed grave concerns about the vetting procedures.
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10-minute test helps tell if your child is dyslexic - The Times 23rd January 2007
Cartoon pictures of a grey mongrel cat washing herself and a small blue alien are at the heart of a new test to help parents to establish whether their children have dyslexia. The ten-minute test, developed by speech therapists and psychologists, screens young children for language disorders from the age of 3. By testing simple grammatical and pre-reading skills, parents, teachers or assistants can check whether a child is “school-ready” or may need more help.
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£50 test shows dyslexia risk in children - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
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NHS beats fraudsters - The Times 23rd January 2007
NHS staff with their hands in the till beware: you are being watched. Hospital Doctor (Jan 18) says that fraud committed by health professionals has fallen by 60 per cent in the past seven years.
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Why some doctors are rubbish - The Times 23rd January 2007
WHAT makes doctors “go bad”? That’s the question posed by Health Service Journal (Jan 18) above a news item about research into poor performance. The research, believed to be the first of its kind, examines what makes some doctors “difficult characters”. Using interviews and psychometric data, it looks at the personalities of hospital doctors and GPs referred to the National Clinical Assessment Service, an NHS organisation that supports those whose performance raises concerns.
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Agencies' job-hunting is a failure - The Times 23rd January 2007
ONE agency in three funded by the Government to help disabled people back into work has failed to find a single person a job in the open market, as opposed to jobs reserved for people with disabilities, New Start (Jan 19) reports. The Department for Work and Pensions programmes for the disabled cost £320 million in 2004-05 but the Commons Public Accounts Committee concluded that the department’s data was “patchy and inconsistent” in the main.
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Baby 'with a cold' killed by virus - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
A baby died hours after a doctor told her parents that she had a cold and would be better in 10 days, an inquest was told yesterday. Kelly and Jason Whitrow were so concerned about the condition of thier 22-day-old baby Shelby on Jan 2 last year that they twice took her to a Bristol NHS walk-in centre.
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Doctors were 'too busy' to treat baby girl who died in her mother's arms - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
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Unruly teenagers 'are product of bad parents' - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
Parents are to blame for crime, drug abuse and unemployment among adults by failing to raise their children properly, according to a report published today. Even middle-class families may be guilty of fuelling serious social problems later in life by sending their children to ill-equipped nurseries at a young age, says the report by the Work Foundation, an independent think-tank.
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City life? It's like jet lag, say scientists - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
City dwellers suffer a form of chronic jet lag that may make them more vulnerable to health problems, according to research. The body is ruled by a "clock" that evolved to keep our metabolism in tune with the rising and setting of the sun. But because that clock is inaccurate it needs to be reset regularly to stop it drifting out of synchronisation with the day/night cycle, as occurs with shift work and aeroplane travel across time zones.
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Starving on a spoonful of mash a day - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
The Government has admitted it is allowing elderly people to battle against starvation in care homes and hospitals, years after being alerted to the scandal by charities. Ivan Lewis, the health minister, conceded that some elderly people were given a single scoop of mashed potato or served meals with plastic cutlery "best suited to picnics".
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Anger over elderly's 'poor food' - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
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'Lives at risk' in cancer vaccine delay - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
The Government was accused of dragging its feet yesterday over approving a national vaccination programme against cervical cancer that could save the lives of more than 1,000 women a year. The vaccine Gardasil became available in October but is not generally obtainable on the NHS.
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Pressure grows to give 12-year-old girls cervical cancer jab - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
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The sick league - The Telegraph 23rd January 2007
Average number of days a year taken sick in 2006
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The seven-year-old girl who's beaten three cancers - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Her brown eyes are sparkling with life. But while seven-year-old Chloe Harrison looks a picture of health now, not long ago it was a desperately different story. She was hit by cancer three times in two years and was not expected to survive – but has astounded doctors with her fighting spirit.
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'After years of ballet my hips are crumbling' - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Darcey Bussell, 37, began dancing at the age of five and at 20 became the youngest ever principal dancer for the Royal Ballet. She plans to retire this year in order to spend more time with her husband, City banker Angus Forbes and their children, Phoebe, five, and Zoe, two. Here she tells how 32 years of dancing have damaged her health.
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Forget the gym - why a brisk walk is really the best workout - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
This activity will melt away the pounds, tone your flabby bits and leave you on an emotional high. Yet the form of exercise destined to become the fitness trend of 2007 does not require gym membership or a personal trainer. All you need to do is walk. "Walking is a refreshing alternative to complicated aerobic routines and over-priced gym memberships," says personal trainer Lucy Knight, author of a new book on the exercise.
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Dust zapper that kills hospital superbugs - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
A dust-zapping device could hold the key to tackling the spread of bacteria and infections. The Air Ion ioniser forces tiny particles in the air to lump together, making them less likely to be inhaled, and has been used to prevent the spread of a superbug in an intensive care unit.
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1,000 new cases of hospital superbug - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Hospitals in London are still struggling to cope with superbug infections, figures reveal today. Cases of clostridium difficile have risen by 1,000 in a year and the number of MRSA cases has only dropped slightly, despite efforts to tackle the problem.
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IVF expert may be struck off for not having licence - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Britain's most successful fertility doctor faces being struck off and jailed. Mohamed Taranissi, 52, is being investigated for operating without a licence and is due to appear before a disciplinary hearing at the General Medical Council.
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Doctors save baby whose twin sister was miscarried - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
A baby has survived the miscarriage of his twin sister after doctors carried out a rare surgical procedure to sew him into his mother's womb. Kelly Bradburn, from Perton, West Midlands, was taken into hospital after going into an advanced stage of labour just 20 weeks into her pregnancy with twins.
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Breakfast Britons go for their porridge oats - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Britons are turning to healthy oats in a bid to get a better start to their busy day. Heatlth conscious Brits sent sales of breakfast cereals soaring to almost £1.6 billion last year, a new report has found.
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Diabetes repair 'occurs in womb' - BBC Health News 23rd January 2007
A mother's cells may try to repair the tissue damage in an unborn child that can result in type 1 diabetes, research suggests. US and UK researchers found unusually high levels of maternal DNA in children with type 1 diabetes - an indication of cell transfer from the mother.
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Afghan poppies 'could help NHS' - BBC Health News 23rd January 2007
Leading doctors say Afghanistan's opium-poppy harvest should be used to tackle an NHS shortage of diamorphine. The British Medical Association says the poppy fields should be used this way, helping Afghans and NHS patients, rather than be destroyed.
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Seven week wait for NHS abortion - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
Women are having to wait up to seven weeks for an abortion, more than twice the maximum three week wait set by the government, the BBC has learned. The long waits have been linked to the current financial difficulties faced by some NHS trusts.
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Young women shunning smear tests - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
Thousands of young women are failing to have cervical smear tests, figures for England have revealed. The NHS Cancer Screening Programme says the number of women aged 25 to 29 who attended last year was down to 69%, compared to 79% 10 years ago.
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Family bid to aid young addicts - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
Alcohol and drug addiction among teenagers in Glasgow is to be treated with a new form of therapy that involves their family. A pilot project will see about 40 teenagers with addictions take part in family therapy.
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International News
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AstraZeneca spends more on plan to wipe out superbugs - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
AstraZeneca, the UK's second largest drug company, is to invest $100m (£50.7m) in the infectious disease area, in an attempt to find novel antibiotics to fight bacteria that are becoming resistant to drugs. The group said it would use the money to expand its research facility near Boston in the US, to accommodate up to 100 additional researchers. Some of the money will also be used on cancer research. Trevor Trust, vice president of infection research , said: "Drug resistance in bacteria continues to grow. It is a global problem."
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The dilemma of a deadly disease: patients may be forcibly detained - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
Doctors fear TB strain could cause a global pandemic if it is not controlled
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Vaccine on a skin patch may stave off Alzheimer's - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
A skin patch that delivers a vaccine against Alzheimer's disease could be available for high-risk patients within six years, scientists said yesterday. Successful trials in animals have raised hopes that the revolutionary treatment will keep the disease at bay in humans without triggering dangerous side-effects. Studies found a single patch dramatically slowed the build-up of toxic proteins in mouse brains for four months at a time.
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Alzheimer's vaccine 'in a patch' - BBC Health News 23rd January 2007
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Menopause at 30 for millions in poverty - The Times 23rd January 2007
Millions of women in India are going through the menopause as young as 30 because of chronic malnutrition and poverty, according to a study by a prominent Indian think-tank. The research suggests that almost one in five women in the country have gone through the menopause by the age of 41.
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New Medical Research - The Times 23rd January 2007
Low-level recreational use of cocaine among pregnant mothers may leave their children with subtle but disabling brain impairments, says a study in the Journal of Neuroscience (Jan). Investigators at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Centre for Research on Human Impairment say that their laboratory experiments explain why children of such mothers may often develop a form of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder that cannot effectively be treated by Ritalin.
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Coffee could hold the cure for baldness - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
Coffee could hold the secret to curing male baldness, according to new research. Scientists have discovered caffeine stimulates the growth of tiny follicles in the scalp in men who are starting to lose their hair.
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Being cynical is bad for your heart - Daily Mail 22nd January 2007
You may not be inclined to believe it - but doctors claim that being cynical is bad for your heart.
Scientists have found that those who have a natural scepticism about life have chemicals in their blood which cause inflammation.
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Where to go if you want to live to be 100 - Daily Mail 21st January 2007
If you want to enjoy a long and healthy old age, here’s some bad news – you’re in the wrong country. Scientists have identified the four places in the world where many more people than usual live to be over 100, and none of them is in Britain.
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Cheshire and Merseyside News
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Plans revealed for second new prison on Ashworth site - Liverpool Echo 22nd January 2007
PLANS for a second new prison in the grounds of a secure hospital inMerseyside have been formally announced. An empty wing at high-security Ashworth hospital will be converted into cells for 350 men.
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Mother begins damages action against hospital - Liverpool Daily Post 22nd January 2007
A MOTHER who claims she was permanently disabled after aging hospital equipment collapsed during the birth of her daughter has begun a High Court claim for hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation. Christine Louise Morley, of Flint Drive, Neston, claims that stirrup equipment in which she was secured fell apart during the birth of hernow four-year-old daughter Rebecca in February 2002, damaging her back.
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GP banned by medical council - Warrington Guardian 22nd January 2007
A WARRINGTON doctor has been banned from practice by the General Medical Council (GMC), pending the outcome of an investigation into matters relating to him. The decision means that Paul Frederick Hardcastle, who worked in otolaryngology, (ear, nose and throat), at Warrington Hospital, will remain suspended until 7 June, 2008.
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Ambulance chiefs apologise for 75-minute wait - Warrington Guardian 22nd January 2007
AMBULANCE service bosses have unreservedly apologised after an 86-year-old woman was left lying in an Orford street for more than an hour. The pensioner collapsed outside her home on Capesthorn Road last week and concerned neighbours called an ambulance.
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Inquest hears OAP feared he had cancer - Wirral Globe 22nd January 2007
A PENSIONER took his own life to save his wife from turmoil after hearing that he may have prostate cancer. Noel John Crossley from Valley Road, Bromborough, was found dead in his garden shed before he was diagnosed with the disease.
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Cumbria and Lancashire News
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Primary Care Trusts' joint statement - Lancashire Telegraph 22nd January 2007
Joint statement from Blackburn with Darwen NHS Primary Care Trust and East Lancashire NHS Primary Care Trust. The CATS consultation process commenced on 15th January and offers an opportunity for patients, the public and NHS staff to influence the shape and locations of the new service. CATS is a key element of our strategy to further reduce waiting times in the NHS as we move towards the delivery of the 18-week maximum wait in 2008.
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Top docs in revolt over privatisation - Lancashire Telegraph 22nd January 2007
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Doctors angry at plan to assess patients at private clinics - The Guardian 23rd January 2007
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Fears over new NHS role for firms - BBC Health News 22nd January 2007
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Maternity transfers would cost lives, MP Jamie tells Commons - Carlisle News & Star 22nd January 2007
DOWNGRADING maternity services could dramatically cut ambulance response times and ultimately put lives at risk, an MP has claimed. Copeland’s Jamie Reed believes time spent transferring mothers from Whitehaven to Carlisle will leave gaps in ambulance coverage for other emergencies.
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Health chief praises council’s unitary bid - Carlisle News & Star 22nd January 2007
THE chair of the new Cumbria Primary Care Trust has praised the county council’s bid to create a single unitary authority. Maggie Chadwick took over as interim chair when the existing health trusts in the north and south of the county merged last year.
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Greater Manchester News
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2,000-mile dentist trip saves £8000 - Manchester Evening News 22nd January 2007
A DAD has travelled more than 2,000 miles to get his teeth fixed - despite living just yards from a dental surgery. John Thompson saved almost £8,000 by seeing a dentist in Hungary rather than one in Salford.
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Battling the cold snap - Altrincham Messenger 22nd January 2007
ELDERLY homeowners in Trafford are being urged to protect themselves against severe weather conditions. By following a five-point winter checklist they can protect their homes this winter, says Age Concern Manchester
Full links to the articles detailed can be found at www(dot) fade the blog 2 (dot)blogspot (dot)com, This has been a Podcast of Another 15 Minutes ... Health News from the Fade Library.
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