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Three-quarters of NHS hospitals in England cannot guarantee the safety of children in their care, the government's health watchdog warned today in a "wake-up call" to shock doctors and managers into improving services. The Healthcare Commission said nearly one in five NHS trusts did not provide effective life support for children brought in for emergency treatment at night last year. More than half of hospitals did not give staff adequate training in child protection, ignoring procedures put in place after the death of the child abuse victim Victoria Climbié in 2000.
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Children 'are being let down badly by many hospitals' - The Times 28th February 2007
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Fears over children's hospitals - BBC Health News 28th February 2007
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Pregnant women should be asked by their GPs and midwives about their mental health as routinely as they are about their swollen ankles to stem the tide of ante and postnatal depression that hits one in seven mothers, the government's health watchdog advises today. The guideline, from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), is about more than "the baby blues", said experts. Some women become seriously ill after childbirth. Doctors, nurses, midwives and other professionals need to identify not only those with depression but also those with anxiety, eating disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and obsessive compulsive disorder.
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More help for pregnant women with depression - The Telegraph 28th February 2007
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Doctors 'failing to spot' depression in new mothers - Daily Mail 27th February 2007
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The government's chief science adviser yesterday backed controversial plans to create embryos that are part-human, part-animal, in defiance of ministers who want to outlaw the research. Sir David King said work on the embryos should be allowed under tight regulations, adding that it was crucial for scientists to gain the public's trust and support for the research to avoid a GM food-style backlash. His position leaves the government isolated over proposals to ban experiments many scientists claim could lead to lifesaving stem cell therapies.
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Top scientist backs hybrid embryos to treat disease - Daily Mail 27th February 2007
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A celebrated politician and diplomat who played a key role in the carve-up of the Middle East after the first world war is to be called on to perform a final service which could reap incalculable benefits for global health. Nearly 90 years after his death, researchers hoping to find the best way of treating the predicted bird flu pandemic have been given the go-ahead to exhume the body of Sir Mark Sykes, 6th baronet and co-author of the Sykes-Picot agreement, which dismantled the Ottoman empire.
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Patients who have complaints or compliments about hospital treatment can now publicly feed back their experiences and suggestions online - and influence changes. Mary O'Hara meets the GP who made it happen
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Chris Ham (Comment, February 26) is right to question whether the government's pursuit of its current, mutually inconsistent policies will improve the NHS or, more likely, as your leader indicates, lead to its demise. But his analysis does not go far enough. Ninety per cent of all treatments take place in primary care. Most hospital admissions are emergencies. The majority are older people who typically have a complex range of chronic conditions. Most of us would like to know that a full range of specialist services are available to us wherever and whenever our emergency arises. This includes mental-health problems, which affect 10% of us. Fewer than 20% of patients referred by GPs for specialist treatment require elective surgery.
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Towering achievements cast long shadows, and it is society's extraordinary success in extending life that explains increasing dementia. As a new report from the London School of Economics explained yesterday, life-blighting loss of memory and mental faculties affects only a minority of older people, but the proportion increases for each successive age bracket, so that nearly one in four of the very oldest are affected. The population aged over 85 will more than double by 2051, so, barring unforeseen scientific advance, instead of 700,000 people with dementia today there will by then be 1.7 million.
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It was the drug that fuelled the psychedelic 60s - and was tested as a weapon by MI6. But whatever became of LSD? Duncan Campbell traces its colourful past, and finds that the acidheads are still out there
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My husband, George Melly, is in the early stages of vascular dementia, the second most common form after Alzheimer's disease. He can still sing and do radio interviews and he can talk endlessly about surrealism - but the other day he told me that he has no sense of time, day or space.
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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the television chef and champion of small producers, is fronting a new offensive against the supermarkets which he portrays as a "bullying" force destroying British food. The Channel 4 presenter will denounce the supermarkets at a public meeting in Westminster tonight and demand new powers to limit their growth.
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More newborn babies die in Britain than anywhere else in Western Europe, with maternal obesity a significant factor, according to research. Tommy’s, the charity that sponsors research into miscarriage and premature birth, said that data gathered across the EU suggested that Britain had similar rates of neonatal mortality to Estonia and Hungary. All other Western European countries perform better.
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The National Health Service has a pensions "black hole", which has risen by £61.2 billion over the past two years, according to official figures released yesterday. Government documents obtained by the Conservatives show that total liabilities for the NHS pension scheme have hit £165.4 billion, compared with £104.2 billion two years ago.
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Hays, the recruitment company, has blamed budget cutbacks at the National Health Service for a fall in profit margins at its UK business. Hays recruits thousands of workers on behalf of the Government, especially IT workers and accountants for NHS Trusts. Chief executive Denis Waxman said: "We're not getting the volumes through because of budgetry cuts, especially in the NHS."
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Denying drug treatment to thousands of Alzheimer's sufferers is an "incomprehensible and illogical" decision, the most eminent experts in the field have said. Doctors and campaigners said the decision by NHS rationing chiefs to withhold dementia drugs that cost just £2.50 per patient per day for those in the early stages of the condition "beggars belief".
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Good Health viewpoint: He was happy to campaign for the Labour Party during the 1997 election, but Dr John Marks is now angry about what the Government has done to the NHS. Here, the former chairman of the British Medical Association argues that our national health service has been ruined for ever: Every day, I thank God ten times over that I am not working for the NHS any more. Strong words, you might think, coming from a man who devoted more than 40 (mostly happy) years to the service, 35 of those as a GP.
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Labour minister's widow Susan Crosland went in to hospital for a hip replacement. After catching MRSA she ended up losing four inches from one of her legs: Now in her early 70s, the writer Susan Crosland retains her elegance and quick wit. She is wearing jewellery given to her by the important men in her life - earrings from her husband, former foreign secretary Anthony Crosland, and a ring from Auberon Waugh - and blue boudoir pyjamas with matching ballet pumps.
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Honey could be the latest weapon in the battle against hospital superbugs. It has long been used to dress wounds by the Aborigines, who trusted its anti-bacterial powers.
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The impotence drug Viagra could help men suffering from pelvic pain. As many as one in ten men in the UK have pelvic pain syndrome, with symptoms including lower back and groin pain, and bladder problems. A trial has been looking at the use of the drug — originally developed to help angina patients, but now widely used to treat impotence — to see if it can help to open the constricted blood vessels that may be the source of the discomfort.
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We think of our homes as somewhere we should feel safe - yet the toxic chemicals found in routine household products make it potentially dangerous. While there has been much research into how individual chemicals behave, there is little knowledge of what their combined effects could be, explains dr steven smith, environmental scientist at King's College London.
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Twenty years ago, it was a leisurely 33 minutes spent chewing and chatting to loved ones. But now dinnertime is a race to the finish - and often a solo affair.
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Thousands of Alzheimer's patients are being denied drugs that could slow the progress of this ghastly disease. The Government's spending watchdog has decided that the drugs - which cost around £2.50 a day per patient - are not 'cost-effective'. As a result, many patients and their families are left struggling to cope with the dreadful erosion of memory and everyday skills caused by the disease.
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A brave 16-year-old who gave up being treated for leukaemia to spend what time she had left with her family, has died. Josie Grove lost her two-and-a-half year battle at home and surrounded by her closest relatives on Monday afternoon.
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One of the country's top black police officers has spoken out about the dangerous consequences of Labour's decision to relax cannabis laws. Superintendent Leroy Logan said reclassification of the drug had led to "extensive and expansive" use among youngsters.
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Teenage mothers should receive regular home visits to advise them on how to avoid falling pregnant again. New guidance also says family doctors should be better at identifying people at risk of catching sexually-transmitted diseases to ensure they and their partners receive immediate treatment.
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Almost 500 workers have been offered anti-viral drugs following the outbreak of avian flu on the Bernard Matthews poultry farm in Holton, Suffolk. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said the 480 people included workers and those involved in the clean-up.
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Questions are being raised about the NHS's ability to push ahead with plans to close services. Many local councils are using their powers to object and asking the health secretary to intervene.
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International News
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A United Nations agency has been accused of hampering the fight against HIV/Aids by opposing measures that would reduce the soaring number of infections among injecting drug users. The International Narcotics Control Board takes an implacable stance against "harm reduction" measures such as needle exchanges and injection rooms on the basis that its role is to stop and not condone illegal drug use. But a report from the Open Society Institute and the Canadian HIV/Aids Legal Network says it has become "an obstacle to effective programmes to prevent and treat HIV and chemical dependence".
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People who regularly take vitamins A and E and beta-carotene in the hope of living a fitter and longer life may run a risk of earlier death, according to research in an influential medical journal. The three supplements are marketed on the premise they deliver antioxidants to the body to mop up free radicals, thought to be responsible for some of the effects of ageing. But none was found to lengthen the lives of those who took them, according to an analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association of all the substantial trials done to date.
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Vitamins 'could shorten lifespan' - BBC Health News 28th February 2007
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American restaurant chains are recklessly promoting "extreme eating" without giving customers details about what they are consuming, according to the Centre for Science in the Public Interest. The group is calling on federal and local governments to force chains to list nutritional data, including calorie, fat and salt content on their menus.
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Watchdog blasts 'X-treme Eating' - BBC Health News 27th February 2007
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Women who exercise regularly can cut their risk of breast cancer by a third, say researchers. Those who swim, jog or do aerobic sports for more than five hours a week have a lower risk, they found.
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Forgetting to take medicine may be a thing of the past as researchers close in on creating an artificial tooth which automatically releases medicine. The Intellidrug device is small enough to fit inside two artificial molars in the jaw, the Engineer journal said.
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Cheshire and Merseyside News
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Hospital gets better - Middlewich Guardian 27th February 2007
A HOSPITAL that serves patients in Northwich, Winsford and Middlewich has made progress since being condemned for its treatment of older people.
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Cumbria and Lancashire News
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CARLISLE MP Eric Martlew hopes the quick response of ambulance staff during Friday night’s train crash will convince bosses not to close the city’s control room. He yesterday lobbied government health minister Rosie Winterton – who described the medics and call centre staff as heroes – during a pre-arranged visit to the area.
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FIVE-YEAR-OLD Sam Lennon is living proof that a baby’s survival is not just about how early it is born. The bubbly youngster was one of quadruplets born to Heather and Gordon Lennon at just 25 weeks.
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Counsellors have been called in by four local businesses and Bolton Council to help smokers kick the habit. Two smoking cessation workers are helping staff at Bolton Town Hall. And Warburton's bakery, Hampsons bakers, De La Rue printers in Westhoughton, and the Royal Mail in Farnworth, have also recruited counsellors from Bolton's Stop Smoking Service.
A NURSE, violently assaulted by an elderly woman patient who used her zimmer frame as a weapon, has been reliving her nightmare ordeal. Margaret Mawers had been inquiring into an argument between the patient and another elderly woman but ended up being punched herself.
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