Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Another 15 Minutes...Health News from Fade



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National News

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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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It is unlikely that the Prince of Wales has ever sat at a plastic table in his local McDonald's and tucked into a Big Mac and fries. But yesterday the country's most famous organic farmer did not let his lack of firsthand experience deter him, suggesting that a global ban on the fast food giant was the key to improving children's health.


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Royal rebuke over McDonald's food - BBC Health News 27th February 2007


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The Royal pasty that's unhealthier than a Big Mac - Daily Mail 28th February 2007


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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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A morbidly obese boy of eight was allowed to stay with his family yesterday, after a three-hour child protection conference repeatedly warned his mother about the diet she had allowed him to follow. Connor McCreaddie who still weighs 89kg (over 14st) after an intensive slimming exercise since Christmas, will not go into care as social services on North Tyneside had warned he might


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Obese boy to stay with his mother - The Times 28th February 2007


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Obese boy to remain with mother - BBC Health News 27th February 2007


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A baby boy pronounced dead following a heart attack "came back to life" half an hour later when medical staff noticed him twitching and restarted his heart. Woody Lander had been dead for 30 minutes when his body was handed to his parents to say goodbye.


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The boy who came back to life - The Times 28th February 2007


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Couple's joy as baby 'came back to life' - The Telegraph 28th February 2007


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Miracle baby comes back from the dead - Daily Mail 27th February 2007


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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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For a woman trying to conceive, the best prescription could be a knickerbocker glory. It might play havoc with her diet but the old-fashioned confection, made with cream and ice cream, could help her get pregnant, according to a study.


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Low-fat food is ‘bad for you’ - The Times 28th February 2007


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Low-fat dairy infertility warning - 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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This is bound to cause a stink among those who adhere to the centuriesold belief that garlic is good for the heart. According to the latest research, consuming the wonder bulb makes no difference whatsoever to cholesterol levels.


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Garlic 'does not cut cholesterol' - 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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Best things come in small packages - Carlisle News & Star 27th February 2007

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Greater Manchester News

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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.


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Nurse tells of violent attack - The Bolton News 27th February 2007


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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Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Another 15 Minutes...Health News from Fade



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National News

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Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, gave the green light yesterday to plans for seven new hospitals to be built under the private finance initiative at a cost of £1.5bn. Her decision to back the NHS's biggest ever tranche of investment will provide modern facilities for patients in Bristol, Peterborough, Middlesbrough, Wakefield, Tunbridge Wells, Chelmsford and Edmonton, north London.


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£1.5bn to be spent on PFI hospitals - The Times 27th February 2007


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Tony Blair insists his government is not building a Big Brother-style super-database. But all the talk of 'perfectly sensible' reforms and 'transformational government' masks a chilling assault on our privacy


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Sam Wollaston describes patients featuring in the Channel 4 documentary on health anxieties - Hypochondriacs: I Told You I Was Ill - as "idiots ... that should be told not to waste doctors' time ... because they are totally fine" (Last night's TV, February 20). He writes off evidence-based treatments as "rubbish ... that does not work". His freely admitted lack of scientific knowledge on the subject can be forgiven; but even though his comments were intended to be light-hearted, and he states that hypochondria is a serious condition, the article raises question


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The most popular age to have a baby has passed 30 for the first time. Increasing numbers of women are putting off having a family until they have established relationships and settled careers, figures show. In every age group under 30 the birth rate is falling, but in every age group over 30 it is rising, the statistics from the Office of Health Economics (OHE) show. The fastest rise has been in births to women over 45, a 50 per cent increase from 2000 to 2005.


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Dramatic rise in fortysomething mothers - The Telegraph 27th February 2007


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A Congolese nurse has won a last-minute reprieve from deportation following a campaign led by five bishops and the actor Colin Firth. The nurse said he feared for his life if he was forcibly returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He fled after refusing an order to inject a lethal dose of morphine into dissident soldiers. Pierre - not his real name - was to be removed on a charter flight from Stansted. But he was among four Congolese asylum-seekers who learnt that a legal appeal against their removal had succeeded. It was not clear last night whether the flight carrying another 37 people had taken off.


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The number of people suffering from dementia in Britain has been calculated at 700,000 in a ground-breaking new report that found the cost of their care is £17 billion a year. The number of sufferers is projected to increase to more than one million by 2025 and to 1.7 million in 2050 as the population ages. Experts say any cure for the condition will be many years off, too late to help the hundreds of thousands of people currently in their thirties and forties who are on course to develop dementia.


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A new method could be used to tackle MRSA: the honey of Australian bees. The natural remedy is being used by the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough, a centre of excellence for heart surgery. It uses honey from a colony of bees only found in Queensland to clean infected wounds, along with dressings containing a gum extracted from seaweed. The honey seals the injury and the seaweed extract draws and absorbs the harmful bacteria.


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A cancer sufferer who spent £70,000 on a drug that he believed would prolong his life has been told it can now be prescribed on the NHS. Keith Ditchfield, 53, a businessman who lives in Stonyhurst, Lancashire, is terminally ill. He learnt of Nexavar while receiving treatment in Germany.


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England’s country pubs are likely to bear the brunt of any closures after the introduction of the smoking ban this summer, according to Irish publicans. As pubs prepare for the implementation of the ban on July 1, the warnings from rural Ireland were backed by official figures from Dublin showing that country pubs were shutting at a record rate.


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A quarter of all births in NHS hospitals are being carried out by Caesarean operation, a report from the Office of Health Economics says. The report, covering figures from 2005, underlines current trends showing a growth in C-sections, which have been edging closer to 25 per cent of births in recent years. The increase, the authors say, has come from greater use of emergency Caesareans, in part because women are delaying having children until later in life and greater obesity in mothers leading to birth complications. Doctors’ fear of litigation is also identified as a factor driving up the rate.


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Obese women force up rate of caesarean births - The Telegraph 27th February 2007


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A quarter of UK births now Caesarean - Daily Mail 26th February 2007


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Motorists face random breath testing under government plans to reduce the toll of deaths and serious injuries from drink driving, The Times has leant. Ministers believe that giving the police the power to stop any driver, regardless of how they are driving, would be a powerful deterrent.


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Plans to outlaw the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for potentially life-saving stem cell research are to be dropped after a revolt by scientists. The proposed government ban on fusing human DNA with animal eggs, which promises insights into incurable conditions such as Alzheimer’s and motor neuron disease, will be abandoned because of concerns among senior ministers that it will damage British science.


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Britain is 'lagging behind Europe in cutting deaths on the road' - The Times 27th February 2007


Britain has one of the worst records in Europe for reducing road deaths despite claims by the Government that the roads are safer, a survey has found. Deaths on British roads have fallen by 7 per cent in the past 5 years, compared with a 35 per cent drop in France and 25 per cent in Portugal, Sweden and the Netherlands. Britain lies with Slovakia and Poland near the bottom of the table of European Union states, compiled by the European Transport Safety Council, a Brussels-based campaign group.


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Connor McCreaddie is eight years old and weighs 14 stone. Even in an age that did not share the present obsession with obesity, his freakish - and apparently self-inflicted - weight problem would be a cause for concern. In today's climate it has excited the attention of the authorities in Wallsend, where he lives. They have said that unless the boy's mother takes steps to ensure he loses weight, he will be taken into care. This raises a profound philosophical point. Children are normally removed from the home because they have suffered abuse. There will be those who argue that allowing an eight-year-old to balloon to this size is deeply abusive. This would not, however, tie in with most sensible perspectives on this question. Nicola McKeown, the boy's mother, was interviewed yesterday by the BBC. She seemed hapless and rather intimidated by her son's eating habits, rather than deliberately cruel and careless. One then has to ask how the child, or the mother, is likely to be improved by his being placed in care.


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Four years ago, my friend Susanna Gelmetti was scouring the supermarket shelves in vain for some healthy and appetising ready-made spaghetti sauces. She was ready to pay for labels that promised "fresh" and "natural" - and knew other middle-class shoppers would do the same. Having spotted the gap in the market, Susanna launched "Dress Italian" - a little more expensive than your average jar of gluey sauce, but when it comes to the best ingredients, who's counting?


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Most people know too much sunlight can damage the skin and most skin cancers are caused by damage from the sun's ultraviolet rays. But there are still a number of myths surrounding sun protection. As we experience record warm temperatures this year we expose the facts.


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The alarming decline in the mental health of Britain's youth was revealed today after it emerged that suicidal children as young as five contacted ChildLine. The charity reported that nearly four out of five calls about suicide last year were from girls.


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As the devastating human and financial cost of dementia is revealed, the Daily Mail launches a campaign to end the restrictions on drugs to treat Alzheimer's disease. Already 750,000 Britons are affected by dementia - more than half of them with Alzheimer's - at an estimated cost to the nation of £17billion a year.


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The frail and elderly are facing a care home lottery with just one in 20,000 people qualifying for free nursing care in parts of the country, a damning report has revealed. The NHS has virtually stopped paying care home bills in large areas of Britain, the alarming new figures showed.


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She is known to friends and family as the Sleeping Beauty, but Nathalie Hoyland's life is no fairy tale. Every night when she drifts off into slumber, it might be several mornings later when she wakes up.


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I lost one of my hearts...but I've never felt healthier - Daily Mail 26th February 2007


For 13-year-old Hannah Clark, happiness is going to school, climbing the stairs and running down the street. These everyday activities represent the normal life she has craved ever since she can remember.


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Public want food 'traffic lights' - BBC Health News 27th February 2007


The public overwhelmingly support 'traffic light' food-labelling rather than the system adopted by much of the food industry, a survey suggests. The Netmums website surveyed more than 17,000 parents, and found 80% backed 'traffic lights'.

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International News

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Milan may have highly strung models and Rome stressed out politicians, but a new study has found that medieval Florence is on the frontline in Italy's cocaine boom. Researchers tested a mammoth urine sample taken from the sewerage under the city's streets, museums and art galleries over six months that revealed over 12 kilos of cocaine had been snorted, equivalent to more than 482,000 lines, almost one line per Florentine. Sampling also indicated about one kilo of heroin consumption.


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Good news has emerged this month for those who want an effective method of contraception that does not involve hormones, injections or intrauterine devices. New research, published in the journal Human Reproduction, has found that the sympto-thermal method (STM) of family planning is just as effective as the pill. STM uses two indicators - body temperature and changes in cervical mucus - to identify the most fertile phase of a woman's menstrual cycle. "This puts contraception under a woman's control," says Toni Belfield of the Family Planning Association. "It's easy to learn, it can enhance a relationship, and it's easy to stop if a woman decides she does want to become pregnant."


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Garlic has no detectable effects on levels of cholesterol in the bloodstream, a trial suggests. While this does not prove that garlic is ineffective in protecting the heart, it shows that any effects it may have are not caused by it reducing cholesterol, a claim often made by health-food companies.


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Garlic fails heart test - The Telegraph 27th February 2007


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Regular consumption of the most common painkillers is linked to an increased risk of suffering strokes and heart disease, research claims. Men who took aspirin, ibuprofen and paracetamol were much more likely to have high blood pressure diagnosed than those not taking them, according to the research published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.


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A proposal to give a huge cash bonus to Cypriot women who have large families could in fact lead to an "epidemic" of abortions, an MP has warned. The government has proposed a £23,000 (34,000 euro) bonus to mothers who have three or more children.


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Eating black soya beans could lower fat and cholesterol levels and may help prevent diabetes, a study suggests. Yellow soya is already known to lower cholesterol, but black soya is used in traditional oriental medicine as a treatment for diabetes.


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Drug may boost Down's performance - BBC Health News 26th February 2007


Scientists believe they have found evidence of a drug which alleviates the learning difficulties associated with Down's Syndrome. A Stanford University team in the US looked at a drug once tested as an epilepsy treatment in the 1950s.

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Cheshire and Merseyside News

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A DOCTOR accused of possessing a CS gas canister has appeared in court. Dr Fabrizio Equizi, 41, a GP at Claremont medical centre in Maghull, was before Liverpool crown court for a brief hearing.


PARENTS will be able to stay close to their children at a Wirral hospital thanks to a £750,000 grant. The money will give Arrowe Park hospital its own Ronald McDonald House, similar to the one at Alder Hey, by the end of the year.


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Big clampdown on the wife-beaters pays off - Liverpool Echo 26th February 2007


MERSEYSIDE police and local courts have stepped up their war on wife-beaters. New government figures show that 60% of prosecutions for domestic violence were last year successful, up from 51% the previous year.

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Cumbria and Lancashire News

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TEENAGE pregnancies in Cumbria rose by 12 per cent in a year, according to figures released yesterday. Date from the Office of National Statistics shows that in 2005, 374 teenagers aged 15 to 17 became pregnant compared with 333 in the previous 12 months.


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A LEADING government health minister is visiting Carlisle today to officially open the city’s newest NHS dental practice. Rosie Winterton, Minister of State for Health Services, will tour the Victoria Place surgery and meet with both staff and patients.


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CUMBRIAN health campaigners are taking their protest up one of the county’s highest mountains in a bid to make bosses sit up and listen. Next Saturday, union members and supporters will trek up Skiddaw taking the NHS Together banner with them to the peak.


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Patient wins cancer drug plea - The Times 27th February 2007


A cancer sufferer who spent £70,000 on a drug that he believed would prolong his life has been told it can now be prescribed on the NHS. Keith Ditchfield, 53, a businessman who lives in Stonyhurst, Lancashire, is terminally ill. He learnt of Nexavar while receiving treatment in Germany.


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A GRANDFATHER is today preparing for extremely rare surgery to remove his lung after being diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer caused by asbestos. William Royle, aged 66, was told he was suffering from mesothelioma in November and given the devastating news he only had a few months to live.


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Hi-tech patient system rolls out - Altrincham Messenger 26th February 2007


A PIONEERING hi-tech system, which ensures doctors have up to date information about patients, has been developed in Trafford. The system uses cutting-edge technology to collect and share information across the NHS.

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Monday, February 26, 2007

Another 15 Minutes...Health News from Fade



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National News

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An eight-year-old boy who weighs 89kg (14st) may be taken into care because of fears for his health. Connor McCreaddie, who is four times the weight of an average child of his age, has difficulty dressing and washing himself and misses school regularly because of poor health. His mother has been summoned by letter to a child protection conference tomorrow to decide on his future. She and Connor's grandmother complain that they have not received sufficient support from the local health authority on North Tyneside in dealing with his weight problem.


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Obese boy could be taken away from his family - The Independent 26th February 2007


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Royal Mail is in a hole and the government is trying to dig it out. Now questions are being raised as to whether this effort is legal, and before long they could find echoes in a very different context - the NHS. For the health service is on the cusp of being subjected to European competition law and, should that happen, hospital bail-outs might cease to be legal. The liberalised health service would then resemble Pandora's box - something which, once opened up, could not again be closed.


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The number of people suffering from dementia will increase by 154% in the next 45 years, according to a report by some of the top researchers of the illness in Britain, with the number affected rising from 700,000 today to 1.735m in 2051. The economy could be crippled by soaring rates of the condition, as the population ages and better cures are found for other illnesses, say the health economists from the Institute of Psychiatry in London and the London School of Economics, who presented the findings to officials from the Treasury and Department of Health.


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Tom Dodds tells of his anorexia - The Guardian 26th February 2007


Anorexia is seen as a 'women's problem'. But eating disorders in men are widespread and on the increase. Tom Dodds, 19, tells how his quest for a 'manly' body became an obsession that almost killed him


With the NHS at last balancing its books, the challenge facing Gordon Brown, as chancellor and as prime minister-in-waiting, is how to increase efficiency to fund new drugs and meet the needs of an ageing population. The greatest potential for efficiency improvement is to be found in core medical processes, rather than eliminating waste and bureaucracy by cutting management costs, as Adair Turner's 2001-2002 study found. Recent NHS research confirms this analysis, and shows that as much as £2.2bn could be saved.


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Widows whose husbands died after receiving contaminated NHS blood are urging the government to close a loophole which denies them access to financial assistance. Around 200 women in the UK, many of whom are pensioners and living in severe hardship, are excluded from the fund because their partners, who all suffered from haemophilia, died from hepatitis C complications before an official cut-off date to be considered for compensation. Had they died later or from an HIV-related illness, they would have been entitled to support.


Allegations that patients at a Liverpool hospital had parts of their brains removed for medical research during neurosurgery without consenting to the procedure, can be revealed today. The University of Liverpool is accused of covering up the procedures, alleged to have resulted in at least 12 patients having brain parts removed. Its medical school, which was embroiled in the Alder Hey organ retention scandal, is facing claims that it tried to silence a senior hospital whistleblower who raised the alarm about alleged misconduct by a leading brain surgeon.


I put my long life down, in part, to a healthy diet. I always cut fat off meat, even with good Spanish ham, and if possible I don't eat fattening things. The other key to good health, of course, is staying physically and mentally active. I will never retire. Why retire when you can still make wonderful films with true greats like Johnny Depp? I've just recorded my first album, Revelations; as far as I'm aware, at 84 I'm the oldest person to make their recording debut.


It's hard to know how you'd react in a crisis, and so if there's one group of people who can't be blamed for the weirdness around autism, it's parents. But academic journal editors have different responsibilities. The current issue of Lancet Neurology has a review of a book on autism: the book is for a lay audience, and it flatters the views of the growing fringe autism movement on speculative biological causes and treatments for the condition. The review is by a man with a long and worrying history of working on that fringe - and it's certainly very flattering. Now I'm not advocating censorship for one moment, but I do think that in a situation as extreme as this, it's only fair to give the reader some background.


A complete ban on alcohol advertising and sports sponsorship is necessary to curb Britain's growing drink problems, the Royal College of Physicians said yesterday in response to fresh evidence of "a rising tide" of alcohol-related deaths. Ian Gilmore, the college's president, said the government should act immediately to introduce an advertising watershed to stop children being exposed to the propaganda of the drinks industry. It should then work towards a total ban on all alcohol advertising and sports sponsorship including logos on team shirts.


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Ban alcohol ads in sports, doctor says - The Times 24th February 2007


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Dr Tom Smith: A matter of taste - The Guardian 24th February 2007


Why do doctors no longer take any notice of the colour of the tongue? I remember as a child they would always look at it to check that I was healthy. Now my doctor says that it's not important. My tongue is always covered with a soft white fur. It isn't painful, but what can it be? Should I try to scrape it off? Tongue examination was thought to be important in Victorian times when doctors knew very little about the true causes of disease. They thought the tongue's appearance reflected what was going on inside the body. Now we may look at the tongue for any local signs of infection of the tongue, but not to check general health. There are better ways of doing that. The white fur on your tongue, however, may be a fungal or bacterial infection. Your doctor may well be able to give you something for it.


Brain surgery is cloaked in mystery, but Neil Kitchen says it can be a 'simple procedure'. Melissa Viney went into the operating theatre to find out


I am pleased that Dina Rabinovitch is happy with Guardian readers' response to her appeal for donations to support drug trials at Mount Vernon hospital (Letters, February 22). That means I don't feel so bad about writing this letter. Surely pharmaceutical companies should use their profits to fund the infrastructure for drug trials? Our charitable donations might be better directed at innovative research funded by some of the national cancer charities. And yes, like Dina, readers might also be motivated to donate to local NHS hospitals where they themselves are being treated. As for Dina's concerns about transport to hospital (G2, February 19), let's encourage other public-transport companies to follow the joint Virgin Trains and Macmillan initiative in the south-west, providing free tickets to attend treatment at oncology hospitals (see www.macmillan.org.uk/virgintrains).


Ministers are planning to extend compulsory English language tests to an extra 150,000 migrants who want to settle in the UK each year, under plans to be unveiled by the Home Office next week. The initiative is part of a tough new government strategy that will also see new attempts to block illegal immigrants from having access to public services such as housing, benefits, and medical help, as well as to private services, such as banking.


The actor Colin Firth has joined forces with five bishops to denounce the Government for deporting about 40 Congo nationals on a chartered flight to Kinshasa today. Firth told The Independent that he was particularly concerned about the fate of a nurse on the flight from Gatwick, which would also carry 19 children. " Nobody likes an actor with a cause," he said, "least of all me. But there is good reason to believe this guy is at risk. He is certain that if he returns he will be murdered."



More than 5,000 children are being forced to work as sex slaves in the UK, including thousands trafficked to this country by criminal gangs, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. An important study of global slavery exposes Britain as a major transit point for the movement of child slaves around the world. Commissioned by social research charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the report paints a shocking picture of an international web of gangmasters exploiting children as young as five, as well as vulnerable women. Many are threatened with violence, then sold into the sex trade or forced to become domestic servants, says the report, to be published tomorrow.


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It is a chocoholic's dream. Not only can they indulge in their favourite treat, but they can also say, honestly, that it is doing them good. "Mental Balance Chocolate Gaba" is not just any chocolate, however. It is one of a number of products being pushed in the food industry's latest marketing hype: mood foods. Britain's obsession with life-enhancing, health-promoting foods generates more than £1bn annually, with the market for anti-carcinogenic, macrobiotic, lifestyle foods reaching near saturation point - Mintel, a market research company, estimates sales to have been worth £1.1bn up to 2006, having grown 143 per cent since the start of the decade.


Women aged 45 and over should be discouraged from having babies, according to a leading expert on women's health. Dr Anna Glasier, clinical director for sexual health at NHS Lothian in Scotland, says that middle-aged women considering "late child-bearing" should think again because it is "likely to be difficult and, for some, distinctly unenjoyable".


Heroin is to be prescribed on the NHS to hard-core drug addicts under secret plans being prepared by the Government. The move to use injectable heroin follows the success of trials in London, Brighton and the North-east on drug users who fail to respond to treatment and who commit crimes to finance their habit.


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Britain faces a worsening crisis in sperm donation as rules come into force restricting the buying of sperm from abroad, specialists have warned. As of yesterday, overseas sperm donors are required to comply with the same regulations governing donors in the UK, including losing their right to anonymity.


Swingeing cuts in elderly care and library and sports services will be made this year as councils struggle to keep tax levels down. A Times survey of more than 200 authorities shows that the average proposed council tax increase is about 3.75 per cent so far but this is likely to go up to nearer 3.9 per cent as elements for the police and parishes are added.


A drug that could improve learning and memory in children with Down’s syndrome may begin clinical trials soon. The new therapy, developed in the United States, has led to great improvements in the learning abilities of mice with the symptoms of the condition.


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BRITAIN’S new equality chief has warned that mothers face more discrimination in work than any other group, including the disabled and the poorest ethnic minorities. Trevor Phillips, in his first big policy announcement, is expected to propose sweeping “family friendly” laws and practices.


BRITISH doctors are planning to create “designer babies” free from inherited breast cancer. Four women with strong family histories of breast cancer are seeking to create embryos without some of the mutations known to cause the disease. Doctors treating the women will apply to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) next month for a licence for the new test.



How would you feel if a relative was about to go into hospital? A friend told me recently that when she heard her mother had to have an operation her first thought was: “Oh no, she’ll get MRSA.” Certainly the headlines in the papers last week seemed to justify her fears. Deadly hospital superbugs killed a record 5,400 people during 2004-05, according to figures released on Thursday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).


TWO new “wonder drugs” with the potential to prolong the lives of thousands of kidney cancer sufferers are being denied to National Health Service patients because they are too expensive. The drugs, Sutent and Nexavar, have been shown to shrink tumours dramatically, with some disappearing altogether. Both have been licensed for use in Britain but the NHS has so far declined to issue guidance that trusts should fund the drugs.


ONE of Britain’s medical colleges is set to change its guidelines on a condition that threatens the lives of newborn babies, after it was highlighted last week by The Sunday Times. Pregnant women at risk of vasa praevia will now be screened during routine ultrasound scans at 20 weeks. Previously doctors have avoided conducting the test because of the cost involved in caring for expectant mothers found with the condition.


Think that being able to eat all you like without gaining weight sounds a dream? Think again, says Natalie Savona. Those skinny cows face the same health hazards as the rest of us


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As we talked vices with the head of the Food Standards Agency, it was hard not to be distracted by two large plates on the desk in front of her. One was heaped with raw carrot, corn and celery, the other equally ostentatiously with grapes and pineapple cubes. Dame Deirdre Hutton did not ruin their alignment by eating from one of them. “It’s the only job I’ve had where not putting on weight is a key performance indicator,” she said — and she was not entirely joking.


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Two thirds of the ambulance trusts in England are missing targets to attend life-threatening emergencies quickly because of a shortage of funding, The Times has learnt. Millions of pounds needed to fund extra vehicles and crews are instead being withheld as local health authorities struggle to balance their books before the end of the financial year, ambulance leaders say.


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Violence against NHS staff is costing the taxpayer more than £100 million a year, a documentary will reveal tonight. An estimated 75,000 health workers were victims of assaults by patients last year, the equivalent of one attack every seven minutes, according to BBC 1's Panorama.


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A NHS surgeon today exposed how cash-strapped hospitals were being barred from operating on cancer patients who had not waited long enough. Wayne Jaffe laid the blame for the appalling state of affairs at the feet of Tony Blair, with his vision of reduced waiting times and 24-hour surgery. In a withering assessment of the financial management of the health service, Mr Jaffe said that doctors were being restricted in getting waiting lists down by financial limitations and ever-changing targets.


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Half of hospitals delay surgery to save cash - The Sunday Telegraph 25th February 2007


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Alcohol-related deaths are soaring among young girls. Here, one former binge-drinker gives Michael Shelden a brutally honest insight into the highs and lows of excess Drinking oneself to death used to be a relatively slow process for most alcoholics, but the cheap, sugary concoctions of the alcopop craze have helped to lure more and more young people into a deadly habit of binge-drinking.


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Appraisals are a waste of time, says Max Pemberton Doctors like to think that they are special. In reality, of course, they are just like people in any other profession: some are good at their job, others are not. Some are nice, some are horrid.


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Hospital surgery is paid for on an ill-thought-out tariff basis that could cripple the health service, says Victoria Lambert A short letter published in the Telegraph this week highlighted the contradiction inherent in the Government's attempts to improve the cost-effectiveness of the NHS.


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GlaxoSmithkline will start an advanced trial of its experimental breast cancer drug to test its efficacy against tumours in the head and neck. GSK has filed Tykerb for approval with America's Food and Drug Administration and European regulators as a breast cancer drug. A decision by the FDA is expected on March 13 and in Europe in September.


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Labour's reforms and reorganisations of the NHS have cost £3 billion to implement and brought it back to where it was in 1997. Understanding how the NHS works, or is supposed to work, has never been easy. Over the past decade, it's become harder still, a result of New Labour's slew of initiatives and reorganisations.


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A pregnant girl of 14 revealed yesterday that she had been asked by teachers to give advice to four of her school friends who have fallen pregnant this term. Kizzy Neal, of Torbay, Devon, who is due to give birth in May, spoke out as new figures showed that the seaside resort is one of the worst areas in the country for teenage pregnancy.


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Britain could become the first country to sanction the genetic alteration of human embryos, a step that a pressure group claims could pave the way to designer babies. A decade after the cloning of Dolly the sheep, the Government is opening the door to GM human embryos for research, according to Human Genetics Alert.


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My son, returning from a business trip to India, was amazed how little coverage was given here to the expulsion of 16,000 Indian doctors working in the NHS. In India this remarkable decision, based on the recent upholding of a High Court judgment of last November, has made front-page news for the past two weeks. It is widely interpreted as blatant and racist discrimination against Commonwealth citizens. Not so widely understood was why Mr Justice Stanley Burton had little choice, last year, in ordering the Indians' expulsion. He was merely enforcing the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006, implementing EU directive 2004/38. This made illegal a system set up by the 1971 Immigration Act, under which thousands of Commonwealth doctors every year could complete their post-graduate training in British hospitals, without a work permit, before returning to their own countries.


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The same healthcare professionals often work in the NHS and the private sector; it's just that you get to see them so much quicker with insurance, says Dee Herbert, from Greenwich, south London. Mrs Herbert – who is married to Christian Herbert and has a seven-month-old son, Dylan – first took out private health cover with Norwich Union in 2003. It was part of a work package when she was a logistics manager for the retailer Arcadia Group.


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The astonishing pictures of premature baby Amillia Taylor have started a double debate in Britain: what should be the upper age limit for abortions? And should more be done to keep alive the 800 babies born under the age of 25 weeks in this country every year? As a young obstetrician in the Sixties, Prof Stuart Campbell dealt daily with the horrific aftermath of botched back-street abortions. ''It was heart-breaking to see so many women seriously ill or dying from septicaemia," he says, shaking his head. Then, with abortion illegal, he was all too aware that women who could not or would not keep their babies were turning to the shadowy "Vera Drakes" who, usually for money, would carry out crude terminations in squalid and unhygienic conditions.


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Labour was warned by its own scientists that abolishing weekly rubbish collections risks spreading disease, it emerged yesterday. Ministers were told a year ago that cutting back collections to once a fortnight would raise the threat of infestation by rats, insects and other vermin.


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The Royal National Institute for the Blind is dropping its distinctive logo because it says it suggests the charity is only for blind people. At the same time, its familiar slogan - 'helping you live with sight loss' - will switch to 'supporting blind and partially sighted people'.


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RNIB drops white stick from logo - BBC Health News 26th February 2007


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Budgets for family doctors and other essential NHS treatments have been cut by £12million in order to buy methadone for heroin addicts in prison. The controversial new programme represents a move away from trying to get prisoners off drugs - the major cause of reoffending - to simply allowing them to continue their addiction at the taxpayers' expense.


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Women with diabetes are not receiving enough support from the NHS before pregnancy, as services are "poor and uncoordinated", a report says. The Confidential Enquiry into Maternal and Child Health found many were not given advice about controlling their condition when trying to get pregnant.


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One in six calls to a 24-hour helpline last year concerning mental health came from girls contemplating suicide. Some rang ChildLine while attempting to kill themselves, while others had tried to take their own life, and were thinking of doing so again.


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Perfectionists are more prone to developing irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) after an infection, a study has suggested. University of Southampton researchers asked 620 people with gastroenteritis about stress and their illness.


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A Leicester MP wants the government to scrap prescription charges for university students. Leicester South MP Sir Peter Soulsby said some students were skimping on vital medication because of the cost.


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People who suffer from job burn-out may be prone to developing type 2 diabetes, research suggests. An Israeli study of 677 mostly male, middle-aged workers found those affected by burn-out were nearly twice as likely to develop the condition.


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'Autism link' to Asbo youngsters - BBC Health News 23rd February 2007


More than a third of children given Asbos have underlying brain disorders such as autism, according to a survey. The study was carried out for the BBC with the Somerset charity for brain-injured children, Bibic.

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A new test can identify lung cancer by detecting unique chemicals in the breath of those suffering from it. The breath test uses a small array, less than an inch square, of 36 spots of chemically sensitive compounds that are designed to change colour when they come into contact with specific chemicals in the breath of patients with lung cancer.



THE rise of “internet pharmacies” has been blamed for an epidemic of prescription drug addiction in a report by the United Nations. The study warns that easy access to powerful sleeping pills, antidepressants and painkillers is leading to heart attacks, blindness and even deaths.


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The beans that battle obesity - Daily Mail 25th February 2007


Black soya beans could be a key weapon in the fight against obesity, scientists claim. A diet rich in the beans could also help lower cholesterol levels and aid in the prevention of diabetes.


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Britons visiting Poland are being threatened with deportation if they are taken ill and need hospital treatment while in the country. The warning comes from the Polish Government despite arrangements which mean the NHS will treat Poles free of charge if they fall sick in Britain.


Renee Williams, who weighs 64 stone, has become the largest female patient known to have undergone gastric bypass surgery. The procedure took place yesterday in Houston, Texas and lasted for five hours.


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South Pacific is 'fattest region' - BBC Health News 26th February 2007


A survey on obesity has shown that the South Pacific is the world's most overweight region. The tiny republic of Nauru is the fattest nation on earth. About 94% of its adult population is overweight.


Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in Libya accused of making false claims of torture have pleaded not guilty to charges of slander. The six were sentenced to death in a separate trial last year for infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.


Earthquake simulators can greatly reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms in people who have survived the real thing, according to a study. UK and Turkish researchers developed a simulator, which users control themselves, and said it reduced stress symptoms more than counselling.


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Smoking alters brain 'like drugs' - BBC Health News 24th February 2007


Smoking cigarettes causes the same changes to the brain as using illicit drugs like cocaine, a study suggests. US researchers compared post-mortem brain tissue samples from smokers, former smokers and non-smokers.

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A TERMINALLY-ILL man who last year spent £70,000 of his own money to prolong his life has won his battle to get treatment free on the NHS. Liverpool businessman Keith Ditchfield travelled across Europe to find a treatment, and discovered a drug that slowed down the onslaught of his aggressive renal cancer.


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THE Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen hospitals have been given £275,000 to tackle a killer bug. Money from a £50m national fund will go towards beating Clostridium Difficile.


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A WOMAN diagnosed with crippling arthritis at 19 is to trek through south America to raise money for medical research. Anna Boekweit, 24, from Great Sutton, Ellesmere Port, will follow the Inca trail in Peru to raise £2,500 for the Arthritis Research Campaign.


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SICK people are being urged not to call doctors over their winter ailments. The Health Protection Agency said people with vomiting or diarrhoea should not visit hospital accident and emergency departments or doctors' surgeries.


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Hospital in brain tissue allegations - The Observer 25th February 2007


Allegations that patients at a Liverpool hospital had parts of their brains removed for medical research during neurosurgery without consenting to the procedure, can be revealed today. The University of Liverpool is accused of covering up the procedures, alleged to have resulted in at least 12 patients having brain parts removed. Its medical school, which was embroiled in the Alder Hey organ retention scandal, is facing claims that it tried to silence a senior hospital whistleblower who raised the alarm about alleged misconduct by a leading brain surgeon.
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CUMBRIAN MP Tim Farron says the government must realise that one size does not fit all when it comes to emergency services in the county. The MP for the Kendal area spoke out about the threat to services at the Westmorland General Hospital during a debate in the House of Commons. It has been proposed to focus more services – including urgent care for heart attack and stroke victims – in Lancaster, which would then become a centre of excellence.


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CARERS in Cumbria who look after their elderly and disabled friends and relatives were offered a safety net by the government this week. Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that Cumbria County Council will receive an extra £241,000 to give unpaid, round-the-clock carers a break in times of crisis.


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BURY Council's health scrutiny committee has stated why it decided to refer the controversial Making it Better decision to the Secretary of State for Health. In a formal letter to Patricia Hewitt, the Healthier Communities Scrutiny Commission claimed the move to axe in-patient maternity and children's services from Fairfield Hospital was not in the interests of the local health service in Bury, Rochdale and Rossendale and would have a "detrimental effect on the health and experience of these patients".


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Chorley Hospital has been given the go ahead to operate its own CATS treatment centre in a startling victory for campaigners opposed to it being run by a private firm. CATS - Clinical Assessment Treatment and Support centres - have been proposed by the government to cut waiting lists.


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A TERMINALLY ill man has won his appeal to have a life prolonging cancer drug free on the NHS. Keith Ditchfield, 53, said his was speechless' when the result of an appeal to be given the drug were faxed to him this morning.


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Drug plea on behalf of patient - Lancashire Telegraph 23rd February 2007

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Greater Manchester News


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A FAMILY doctor has called on parents to take more responsibly for the their children's sex education after new figures showed teenage pregnancy rates in Bolton remained high. The number of teenagers becoming pregnant is still among the highest in Greater Manchester, despite a slight fall in the latest annual figures.


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Patient records go electric - Altrincham Messenger 23rd February 2007

A PIONEERING hi-tech system, which ensures doctors have up to date information about patients, has been developed in Trafford. The system uses cutting-edge technology to collect and share information across the NHS.


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