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UK Health News
Alan Johnson, the health secretary, will today declare the long-sleeved white coats worn by generations of hospital doctors to be an MRSA-infection hazard that must be eliminated throughout the NHS in England.
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Superbug fears kill off doctors' white coats - The Times 17th September 2007
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MRSA to force ban on doctors' white coats - The Telegraph 17th September 2007
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Skunk strength has doubled, studies suggest - The Guardian 17th September 2007
The unpublished results of authoritative research into cannabis confirm the "skunk" now on sale in England is stronger than it was a decade ago, but demolish claims that a new "super-strength skunk" - which is 20 times more powerful - is dominating the market.
Encouraging more cyclists on to Britain's roads could save the taxpayer more than £520m and fight climate change, according to a government-backed cycling group. Cycling England says a 20% increase in bicycle journeys would lower healthcare costs and reduce congestion. It adds that by making a £70m annual investment in cycling initiatives the government could cut up to 54m car journeys a year by 2012 and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 35,000 tonnes.
Why do you do taekwondo? I started young and it instilled a lot of discipline in me - there are principles that come with the sport, such as the five tenets: indomitable spirit, perseverance, courtesy, etiquette and self-control. Now I love the competition side.
The government will this week come under fresh pressure to protect children by moving towards an outright ban on potentially "hazardous" chemical additives in food, following the intervention of the influential organic food industry.
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Subtracting the additives - The Times 17th September 2007
"I always go to work when I'm ill. Even if I'm sweating, shaking and vomiting" We're coming into autumn, which can mean only one thing. Well, actually it can mean thousands of things, from leaves turning, to children maiming themselves with sparklers, to another crap Halloween film. But for the purposes of an opening line, it means we're all about to get ill and spread viruses around the office like microscopic, diseased confetti.
Four out of 10 employers say that alcohol misuse is a significant cause of worker absenteeism, but few organisations have policies to deal with drink or drug problems, according to a report published today. In a survey of 500 organisations by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 40% of employers questioned said alcohol misuse was a "significant cause" of employee absence and lost productivity.
Controversy over questionnaire sent out by pro-life campaigners in major push to cut termination time-limit to 13 weeks
Last year Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle came close to death. This year he's trekking 140 miles across Nicaragua. Anushka Asthana reports
Robert Winston is the latest scientist to find that potential life-saving research is thwarted by a misplaced public outcry of moral outrage
Catwalk models at London fashion week will have to show a doctor's certificate proving they are physically and psychologically well enough to work, under proposals published yesterday. Models who are found to have eating disorders may still be given the certificate if they are receiving treatment.
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Designers plead for healthy models - The Independent on Sunday 16th September 2007
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Models required to provide 'good health' certificates - The Independent 15th September 2007
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Models could be given random drug tests in purge on catwalk abuse - The Times 15th September 2007
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Naomi Campbell pans ban on under-16 models - The Sunday Telegraph 16th September 2007
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Skinny models could need a doctor's note for London catwalks - Daily Mail 15th September 2007
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Models 'should show health proof' - BBC Health News 14th September 2007
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Gambling addiction hooks 600,000 people, says report - The Independent 17th September 2007
Gambling addiction in the UK has more than doubled in recent years with up to 600,000 people hooked, new figures are expected to reveal. The research by the Gambling Commission may prove to be the final nail in the coffin for the Government's plans to build the UK's first Las Vegas-style super-casino in Manchester, with many expecting Gordon Brown to scrap the plans.
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Number of gambling addicts soars to 800,000 - Daily Mail 16th September 2007
This winter could see an epidemic in cases of seasonal affective disorder (SAD), following the abysmal summer that was the wettest since records began. The summer is traditionally a time of respite for those susceptible to SAD, but mental health experts have warned that with sufferers reporting winter symptoms throughout the season, the effect of the prolonged bad weather will make the winter months even more of a struggle than usual.
Matrons and nurses are to provide boardrooms with frontline accounts of the fight against hospital-acquired infections. The NHS initiative is one of a series to be unveiled by Gordon Brown and Health Secretary Alan Johnson this week.
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Nurses to lead MRSA fight - The Sunday Times 16th September 2007
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In some areas, nine out of 10 take the drug – and those who work with them say the situation is out of control. Cannabis use among Britain's young offenders is "out of control", up by 75 per cent in some areas and fuelling a crime epidemic, with youngsters stealing to fund their addictions, according to two studies.
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Cannabis use among young offenders rockets by 75 per cent in just three years - Daily Mail 17th September 2007
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Cannabis use among young offenders rockets by 75 per cent in just three years - Daily Mail 17th September 2007
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Pharmaceutical companies are overstating the effectiveness of their drugs, and may be placing patients at greater risk, because animal laboratory studies they fund are biased, it was claimed yesterday. A survey of nearly 300 animal-test studies involving six different experimental drugs suggested that such flawed methodology is rampant in the drug-testing industry.
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Only four out of ten Britons would do more exercise even if their lives depended on it, according to a poll of 2,000 adults for the British Heart Foundation. A TV advert will urge people to take more exercise after the foundation found that one person dies every 15 minutes because of inactivity. A spokesman said: “With busy lifestyles and labour-saving devices, we’ve stopped getting the exercise our bodies need.”
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Brits 'dying not to do exercise' - BBC Health News 17th September 2007
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Brits 'dying not to do exercise' - BBC Health News 17th September 2007
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I am the grandmother of a six-year-old boy who is badly in need of help. His mother (my daughter) is an alcoholic, sometimes in recovery (she goes to AA meetings regularly) but relapses quite often.
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Drug-related charities have been observing some recent, modish shifts in the British consumption of drugs – particularly in cocaine. Apparently, there is now a “two-tier” market in place. You can get cheap, cut, “commercialised” cocaine – perhaps we could refer to it as Lidl coke – for £30 a gram. More affluent customers, meanwhile, go for a much higher quality Peruvian cocaine – or Waitrose cocaine – for £50 a gram.
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AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest pharmaceutical company, is planning to outsource all its drug manufacturing activities within ten years. David Smith, AstraZeneca’s executive vice-president of operations, said that the company aimed to become a pure research, development and marketing organisation.
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A project to identify about 3,500 species of mosquito is under way in an effort to fight malaria, which kills more than one million people a year. Even to the expert eye many mosquitoes are difficult to tell apart; but analysis of their genetic make-up can distinguish the insects. Researchers from the Natural History Museum and other institutions have already discovered 29 new species.
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DNA test that could quickly solve thousands of sick workers’ claims - The Times 17th September 2007
A new technique for testing DNA could transform civil litigation cases by supporting or refuting people’s claims that their health has been damaged by exposure to toxic chemicals. Samples of DNA are taken from a healthy person and exposed to the chemical in question to see which genes are affected. This is then used as a blueprint against which a claimant’s DNA can be compared.
THE world’s largest Aids fund has been the victim of a multi-million-pound fraud involving its programme to help chronically ill children in Africa, Whitehall officials have disclosed. The Serious Fraud Office has been sent a file on alleged corruption involving programmes run by the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria, worth £4.2 billion. The fund was set up five years ago by the G8 group of the wealthiest countries and the United Nations to lead the battle against the world’s most prevalent killer diseases.
If you like what you see, you could be dangerous. Yvonne Roberts investigates ‘clinical narcissism’ Claire is 47, a mother of two, and recently divorced. Her ex-husband, Dan, 58, was a successful businessman when they met 12 years ago. “By the time we separated,” she says, “I no longer knew what was true and what was a lie. I was emotionally battered, my confidence was in shreds, and I felt the person I had once been had somehow been sucked out of me by Dan’s bullying and manipulation.”
The briefest immersion of my head in water renders one or both ears partially deaf for the next week or so. It only started a few years ago, but are my diving days now numbered?
THE first genetic test for prostate cancer, which kills 10,000 men every year in Britain, will be launched here this week. The test is more reliable than methods currently used to diagnose the disease. Doctors say the genetic test is a step closer to being able to screen all men for prostate cancer in the same way as women are routinely checked for breast and cervical cancer.
When I got the call from the Prime Minister to join the government it was truly a bolt from the blue. Like most people I was interested in the change from Blair to Brown but I’d been in an operating theatre most of the day and the idea hadn’t crossed my mind for a minute. When it came it was as daunting a prospect as it was an unexpected offer.
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Tory MP John Bercow shocked many when he agreed to help the government assess services for children with communication difficulties, but he tells, his son’s condition helped make up his mind
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I agree with your correspondent about avoidable “lifestyle diseases” (letter, Sept 13). The Government is happy to leave 24-hour drinking, cheap, high-fat food and supercasinos to the free market. The consequent liver disease, obesity, diabetes and mental health are left for the NHS to sort out.
An Olympic gold winner had to battle medical bureaucracy to get the right diagnosis for her daughter, says Joan McFadden. The former runner Yvonne Murray has all the determination you’d expect of someone who has won a gold in the Olympics, but even her resolve and determination faltered as she struggled to save her daughter’s life in the face of medical bureaucracy.
Why wearing the right bra will give women a sporting chance “WHY don’t more women do sport?” was the teasing headline that caught my eye this week. The answer? They just need more support. The story came from research at the University of Portsmouth, where Dr Joanna Scurr has been analysing how breasts move during the stress of exercise. Apparently they move in three dimensions, meaning that even bras sold specifically for sports use aren’t sufficiently tethering.
Junk medicine: I think this might work Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which seeks to improve the symptoms of illness by changing patients’ attitudes, thoughts and feelings, often strikes people as flaky. It sometimes seems to suggest the power of mind over matter, chiming both with New Age ideas that a healthy body flows from a healthy spirit and the old-fashioned “pull yourself together” approach to psychiatric medicine.
People with asthma and hay fever are being deliberately infected with hookworms to test whether the blood-sucking parasites can control the allergic reactions that cause the conditions.
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The bloodsucking worm that fights allergies from inside your tummy - Daily Mail 14th September 2007
From new mothers to senior citizens, studies show that regular and brisk walking is good for blood pressure, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, joint problems and mental health. According to a recent study by Queen’s University Belfast, just three walks a week reduces waist and hip circumference and lowers blood pressure. But walking alone can be a bore, so if you fancy some company, animal or human, as well as doing your bit for charity, try these organisations.
An optician has agreed to pay a £700,000 out-of-court settlement to the NHS after being convicted of fraud. John Walsby-Tickle, 55, of Caldy, Wirral, who ran 12 shops in the North West, admitted stealing £600 from the Liverpool NHS Trust at Liverpool Crown Court in 2003. The NHS pursued him through the civil courts after discovering that he had stolen “hundreds of thousands of pounds” by falsifying spectacle repair bills and claims for glasses.
Four out of 10 people do not know that fat and sugar can be bad for them, government research has shown. Figures from the Food Standards Agency (FSA) show that 42 per cent of people do not know that foods high in fat and sugar should only be eaten occasionally.
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Consumers 'confused about diet' - BBC Health News 16th September 2007
Health chiefs are to investigate the threat of modern chemicals to the human body. The head of the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the government body charged with protecting the public's health, has ordered the research because she fears not enough is known about the long-term effects of chemicals used in industry, as well as in beauty and household products.
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Pesticides can 'double' the risk of asthma - Daily Mail 16th September 2007
A pill taken once a day could save the lives of thousands of the people who die in English hospitals every year from blood clots, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal. Venous thrombo-embolism (VTE) - or blood clot - kills 25,000 people a year in English hospitals, more than the number of people who die from breast cancer, Aids or road traffic accidents.
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Max Pemberton ponders the ethics of bargain fertility treatments How do you boil a frog? This was a question posed to us once during a lecture at medical school.
Chickenpox vaccines for children could be dangerous later in life, says James Le Fanu Samuel Johnson, writing his dictionary in the mid-18th century when death in infancy was commonplace, noted that chickenpox was "of no very great danger".
Britain's first 'salt cave' treatment was inspired by Polish miners, discovers Victoria Finlay On first impressions, Britain's first therapeutic "salt cave" – designed to alleviate a range of respiratory and skin conditions, including asthma and psoriasis, and to reduce the effects of stress – seems rather incongruous.
A hospital has removed a box of wool and knitting needles from public access, claiming it was a safety hazard. For three years, the Congleton War Memorial Hospital in Cheshire had provided a "knitting box" in its main waiting area, containing wool and needles and inviting patients and visitors to knit a square while they waited.
A doctor in Essex has created a spookily accurate tool for estimating lifespans. Jasper Gerard made an appointment If you wouldn’t mind just waiting till my computer warms up, I will tell you when you are going to die.
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It is most perplexing to watch the Tories wittering on about global warming and the several unpopular measures they propose to combat it, while paying no heed to the open goal that is Gordon Brown's imprudent stewardship at the Treasury. The obvious case in point is the staggering £43 billion in extra funding for the National Health Service over the past five years, with the revelation last week that nearly half has gone on substantial pay increases, up to £20,000 a year, for hospital specialists and family doctors.
The news last week that John Nuttall - a 57-year-old heavy smoker with a broken ankle - was being refused an NHS operation unless he stopped smoking, seems tailor-made to inflame the campaigners for smokers' rights.
Suburbs are being drained of at least £2 billion a year with the Government redirecting money to "needier" areas, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has discovered.
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The Government is being urged to launch a fresh crackdown on "sick-note Britain" by ordering extra checks before doctors sign patients off work. Professor Dame Carol Black, the Government's national director of health and work, wants requests for sick notes, which currently go to GPs, instead to be scrutinised by teams of experts who would attempt to speed an employee's return to work.
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NHS dental patients are receiving below standard treatment because dentists are being forced to make decisions based on the financial cost of procedures, it has been claimed. The Dental Laboratory Association (DLA) has suggested figures over the last few months show a dramatic decline in certain treatments because dentists have been administering less complex procedures.
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'Standards drop' in NHS dentistry - BBC Health News 14th September 2007
Jonny Beardsall investigates how cutting-edge new technology could help an age-old problem Dr Patrick Olivier is having a drama in his kitchen. At first glance, the fitted surfaces look blissfully domestic in his laboratory at Newcastle University, but this is a mock-up: no water flows from the taps, nor can you turn on the gas. What happens here is largely subliminal. But one of the few overt features isn't working this morning. "The LED projectors have blown," says the scientist, before rattling through the technological advances that his small team is making in one of Gordon Brown's "science cities".
Investigation follows the death of a man who contracted Legionnaire's disease after a coach trip, reports Charles Starmer-Smith, while Dr Richard Dawood explains the disease. Investigators are searching for the cause of a deadly strain of pneumonia following the death of a Scottish man who contracted Legionnaire's disease during a tour of Italy.
Have you ever been in a situation where you've thought, or even said, something nasty about someone and within moments something bad has happened to you?
Natural deodorants cut out chemicals and do a great job, says Lucy Atkins The battle to smell fresh has raged for centuries. The ancient Egyptians shaved underarm then slapped on citrus oils and spices.
The Government’s ten-year NHS plan, setting out how the unprecedented increase in health service expenditure was to be spent, made it clear that recruiting and retaining staff by redesigning their contracts and improving their pay was a key priority (letters, Sept 13). The new contract for consultants resulted in the most significant change in their terms and conditions since it was introduced in 1948 and it will clearly take time to reach its full potential.
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When Deborah and Russell Anderson learned they were finally expecting the baby they longed for, they decided to enjoy their last long-haul holiday for years. But their two-week trip to South Africa became a traumatic six-month stay after Deborah gave birth to their son Henry at just 26 weeks
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Thousands of chocolate bars have been recalled by Cadbury because they lack nut allergy labelling. The Dairy Milk Double Choc 250g promotional packs bearing the phrase "Win a Prize and a Half" are affected.
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Cadbury recalls bars in nut scare - BBC Health News 14th September 2007
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Parents whose children bully classmates using text messages or the internet face £1,000 fines. The Government is cracking down on 'cyber bullies' who use mobile phones, email and social networking websites to threaten or torment fellow pupils.
Children with "lazy eyes" do not need to wear an eye patch all day to correct their vision, say experts. Children with the common eye disorder amblyopia, commonly known as "lazy eye", have one eye which does not see properly despite wearing glasses. The condition can lead to vision loss.
A man with a broken ankle is facing a lifetime of pain because a Health Service hospital has refused to treat him unless he gives up smoking. John Nuttall, 57, needs surgery to set the ankle which he broke in three places two years ago because it did not mend naturally with a plaster cast.
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Strict controls are needed to ensure genetic information collected for research is not used inappropriately by outside parties, experts have warned. Many DNA databases have been collated for specific studies on genes and disease, a British Society of Human Genetics meeting in York heard.
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A computer dance programme has succeeded in getting even young people who hate sport to take exercise. Dance Revolution involves laying out removable mats in a studio, and getting participants to follow instructions from a computer on a large screen.
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Four people who ate at an Aberdeen restaurant have been confirmed as suffering from the E.coli 0157 infection. Three of the four are in a satisfactory condition at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and the fourth is recovering at home.
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Reality TV star and model Sasha Gardner spent three weeks living on a landfill. She and the other contestants had to learn to survive on other people's garbage for the Channel Four show 'Dumped'.
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The Royal College of Nursing has voted "with great reluctance" to accept the government's revised pay offer for nurses in England. Its acceptance comes days after Unison, representing 450,000 NHS staff including some nurses, and the GMB union, with 9,000 members, accepted it.
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A review of car parking charges at NHS hospitals has been ordered by the Scottish Government. Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said visitors and staff should be protected from unnecessary or excessive charges.
Patients who need a new liver are refusing to take live donor transplants from relatives because they believe it is too risky for their loved ones. Last year, Scotland became the first part of the UK to allow living adults to donate part of their liver, which is able to regenerate in the body.
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Weight is a national obsession. On the one hand we are in the grip of an obesity epidemic and experts are warning us against getting fat. On the flip side we are seeing a backlash against the super skinny.
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Head teacher Sid Wales was plagued by a persistent cough. He was unable to take assemblies without a coughing fit and was seriously considering giving up his job. "I had this cough for 10 years and over this time it got worse and worse."
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Chocolate cravings come out of the box - BBC Health News 13th September 2007
Our love of chocolate knows no bounds. We think about it, dream about it, and probably - just sometimes - eat a bit too much of it. Some people even go so far as to claim to be addicted to it.
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I always knew there was something wrong with my heart. No other kid collapsed on the ground after playing, cradling their chest. It was only me, with a pain I instinctively ignored. At nine, I leapt from windows on to ice-hard lawns. At 12 I played in Chicago streets, tormenting drivers until they swerved their cars towards me.
HOW’S your light exposure? American scientists have discovered a new health-related lifestyle issue for us to worry about – getting the right sort of light at the right times of the day.
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Lonely people 'more likely to die young' - Daily Mail 14th September 2007
Lonely people are more likely to get sick and die young because it affects their immune systems, according to new research. American scientists used a "gene chip" to look at the DNA of isolated people and found that those who described themselves as chronically lonely had weaker immune systems.
Measuring levels of a protein in the blood could provide the most accurate way to assess how much fat coats the body's organs, say scientists. The build-up of visceral fat has been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
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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