Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Another 15 Minutes...Health News from Fade



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National News

Scores of NHS hospitals across England are failing to protect patients' dignity and to meet basic standards of cleanliness and care, the government's health watchdog warned today in its annual check of conditions on the wards.


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John Carvel: Brown must trust the people on the NHS - The Guardian 16th May 2007


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NHS patients denied dignity, says watchdog - The Guardian 16th May 2007


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One in four patients still put on mixed wards - The Telegraph 16th May 2007


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'90% happy' with hospital stays - BBC Health News 16th May 2007


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The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, was yesterday forced to abandon a controversial online system for junior doctors to apply for training as consultants. In an embarrassing climbdown on the eve of a legal challenge in the high court, she told MPs that the medical training application system (MTAS) would not be used for the rest of this year's interviewing process.


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Identifying social ills is essential to combat them, the new chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation tells Alison Benjamin - and explains why the organisation must wield much greater influence


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UK drug policy is unique. In no other area of social policy do we criminalise at one stroke both recreation and disadvantage. In no other area have we seen so much evidence of the counterproductive effects of a predominantly criminal justice response to a public health problem.


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Unborn babies judged to be at most risk of social exclusion and turning to criminality are to be targeted in a controversial new scheme to be promoted by Downing Street today. In an effort to intervene as early as possible in troubled families, first-time mothers identified just 16 weeks after conception will be given intensive weekly support from midwives and health visitors until the unborn child reaches two years old.


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Conversation peace - The Guardian 16th May 2007


The latest web technology has the potential to disrupt the NHS status quo - but it could transform our experience of healthcare


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Many factories run by Remploy to provide work for 5,000 people with disabilities are about to be shut down. But trade unions plan to fight to the bitter end in this long-awaited showdown.


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Cancer survival rates have doubled over the last 30 years, according to figures published yesterday which show that a cancer patient now has an average 46.2% chance of living for 10 years after diagnosis. The bald figure hides a multitude of variables - some cancers, such as cancers of the lung and pancreas, are far more deadly than others - and women are more likely to survive than men. But the statistic, calculated by the leading cancer epidemiologist Michel Coleman and colleagues from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, is intended to serve as a yardstick for improvements in the UK's battle against cancer by the country's leading cancer funder, Cancer Research UK.


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Cancer: The good news - The Independent 16th May 2007


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Ministers yesterday held out the prospect of communities across England delivering services such as childcare, training programmes and regeneration schemes, to complement the work of local councils and Whitehall agencies. Unveiling a new strategy to transfer public assets - redundant schools and old council and government buildings - to neighbourhoods, the communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, declared: "We are moving from an assumption that the state's role is to try to solve all social problems to one where (its) role is to help communities solve their own problems ... Local government needs to be more than a deliverer of public services ... It needs to focus more on the overall welfare of its communities ... and the capacity for self-management."


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In the daily barrage of conflicting health advice, one theme stands out - eat a Mediterranean diet, and you will live a longer, healthier life. The latest addition to a list that includes reductions in childhood asthma, hay fever, and Alzheimer's is a 12-year study from the US which claims that eating the Mediterranean way can halve the risk of serious lung disease.


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Anyone who puts on sunscreen and avoids the sun between 11am and 3pm (Wellbeing, G2, May 15) is putting their health at risk. Cancer Research UK has given advice of this kind in previous years, but now it recognises that some exposure to the sun is necessary and has modified its advice. Sunscreen blocks the UVB rays which make vitamin D in the skin. These rays provide much more benefit than harm, so long as we don't burn. Many studies have shown that sun exposure and/or vitamin D may prevent a variety of diseases, including cancer, heart disease, raised blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and more.


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Public art rarely comes in a form so huge and unambiguous as the Knight of the Vale, a 10-metre steel knight on horseback charging from a fortress. It stands at the crossroads of two long, straight roads that travel through the centre of Castle Vale estate in Birmingham - roads that once stood as the runways of the wartime airfield that tested and flew the first Spitfire fighter planes.


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Two of Britain's biggest food retailers have announced they will phase out artificial colours and flavourings amid concern about the substances' impact on children's behaviour. Asda said its new guarantee meant that E-numbers would be removed from all its own-brand products by the end of the year, while Marks & Spencer promised to do the same for 99 per cent of its food in the same time. The sweetener Aspartame is also being removed


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Asda to cut out additives by 2008 - BBC Health 15th May 2007


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In a small isolation chamber at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, Adrian Sudbury is about to undergo an operation that he hopes will save his life. For every 100 patients who have a bone-marrow transplant up to 30 do not survive.


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Oh no, not again. Not the health service. Not as the Government’s top priority. Please. It was an odd paragraph in Gordon Brown’s opening leadership speech: “Education is my passion. A priority for the coming months will be the NHS. In advance of the spending review in the autumn, I will meet with those on the front line of the NHS, patients and staff, as we shape the next stages of our plans for our health service.” Education is my passion, but I’m going to focus on the NHS for the next few months.


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Not new ideas, but they give a clue to governing priorities - The Times 16th May 2007


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The Mental Health Bill is the Government’s third attempt in ten years to reform mental health law. Each time the changes it proposes are further removed from the purpose of providing a proper framework for the care, treatment and safety of people who are seriously unwell.


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A promising solicitor with a history of mental illness, potentially sparked by cannabis use, plunged more than 80 feet to his death at the Tate Modern art gallery, an inquest heard yesterday. George Matthew Courtney, the son of World Cup referee George Courtney, achieved straight A*s at GCSE and six As at A-level before studying law at Oxford University and getting a prestigious job with City legal firm Freshfields.


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Fewer British cancer patients have access to the latest drugs than in other European countries, partly because of delays in appraising them by the NHS health watchdog, the Government's cancer tsar admitted yesterday. Prof Mike Richards, the National Cancer Director, said progress had been made in recent years but that patients in other nations are still more likely to receive the latest treatments.


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When actress Denise Welch gave birth to a healthy baby boy nearly 18 years ago, it was the happiest day of her life. Little did she realise that it would also mark the beginning of a lifelong battle against severe clinical depression that, at times, has even driven her to contemplate suicide.


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A revolutionary anti-allergy vaccine can make sufferers up to 100 times more resistant to possible attacks, a study has found. Allergies which blight the lives of millions could be wiped out in three years thanks to the "one-size-fits-all" jab that wards off asthma, eczema and hay fever, scientists claim.


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Your grandmother may find it hard to swallow. But boiling broccoli is bad for your health. Scientists says the British habit of boiling vegetables to a mush destroys their cancer-fighting properties.


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A health campaign which showed smokers being snatched by fish hooks in their mouths has been criticised for frightening children. The Advertising Standards Authority received 744 complaints about the Department of Health TV commercials and posters.


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Hooked smoking ads 'broke rules' - BBC Health News 16th May 2007


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Two-year wait for an NHS hearing aid - Daily Mail 16th May 2007


Patients face delays of around two years to get a hearing aid on the Health Service, a damning report from MPs has found. The introduction of digital hearing aids has caused a surge in demand and half-a-million people are currently waiting for one, the Commons Health Select Committee said.


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MPs condemn hearing aid provision - BBC Health News 16th May 2007


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Edward Eden didn't know it at the time, but his decision to retire to France eight years ago may have saved his life. When he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005, the drug Taxotere was still unavailable to patients in the UK, despite robust evidence that it extended life expectancy.


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Get your skates on to tackle arthritis - Daily Mail 15th May 2007


Specially-designed shoes, with balls on the soles, are having a big impact on symptoms of knee arthritis. After eight weeks of wearing them, patients showed a 70 per cent improvement in pain symptoms and a 30 per cent improvement in movement of the knee.


Nurse leaders are to discuss what industrial action they can take over "below inflation" pay rises. The government offered nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland a 1.5% pay rise this month followed by further 1% rise in November.


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The health risks of air travel will be examined in a new inquiry by members of the House of Lords. Peers examined links between flights and health in 2000 and found there was insufficient proof of any major risks, but urged more research in the area.


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By 2020 two-thirds of people diagnosed with cancer should still be alive after five years, say Cancer Research UK. The goal is one of ten ambitious targets set out by the charity for the future of cancer care.


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Closing the gap between areas of high and low cancer rates would have a startling effect. A cancer atlas of the UK produced by the Office of National Statistics shows how closely deprivation and disease overlap.


More two thirds of people do not comply with basic hygiene principles - and men are the worst culprits, research shows. The Hygiene Council found many people fail to wash their hands after using the toilet, before preparing food or after coughing and sneezing.


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Terminal cancer sufferer and charity fundraiser Jane Tomlinson said she has been subjected to abuse from people who question her illness. The radiographer from Leeds, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000, has raised about £1.5m through a series of gruelling physical challenges


New research shows an apparent link between British nuclear tests in the South Pacific in the 1950s and genetic defects seen in veterans. Massey University in New Zealand said changes to veterans' chromosomes could be attributed to their participation in the tests at Christmas Island.

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International News


A controversial drop-off facility for unwanted babies at a hospital in southern Japan had been open barely three hours before its first occupant - a boy of about 3 - was abandoned there by his father, reports said yesterday.


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For years, middle-aged women have been told to take calcium and vitamin D tablets to protect their bones. But researchers believe there could be another incentive - staying slim.


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A Spanish anaesthetist with hepatitis C has been sentenced to nearly 2,000 years in prison for infecting hundreds of patients with the virus. Juan Maeso, 65, infected 275 people between 1988 and 1997, by injecting himself with a morphine syringe before using the rest on a patient.


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Obesity experts have developed a vertical workstation which helps employees take exercise and shed weight as they work. The designers, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, said it could help obese people to lose up to 30kg a year.


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The nine-to-five treadmill - BBC Health 15th May 2007

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Cheshire and Merseyside News

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TWO hospital trusts have been named among the country’s top 40 by independent benchmarking company CHKS. Southport and Ormskirk Hospital NHS Trust and Wirral Hospitals were both praised for their low MRSA infection rates, low levels of cancelled operations and the high opinion patients had of staff.


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NHS Trust makes the top 40 - Wirral Globe 15th May 2007


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A NEW £13.2m health care facility has been unveiled inside the grounds of HM Prison Liverpool to address the specific needs of the 1,340 inmates. The Director General of HM Prison Service, Phil Wheatley, yesterday officially opened the centre, which contains a 28-bed in-patient unit, dental and GP surgeries, a chronic disease management centre and specialist mental health and drug therapy services.


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MERSEYSIDE’S mental health bosses are spending nearly £8m a year on staff cover. The sum works out at £22,000 a day on replacing Mersey Care workers ill or on leave.


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A THIEF who stole from an ambulance as paramedics treated an injured pensioner has avoided jail. Christopher Gee, who also kicked and threatened an off-duty policeman during the theft, was given a year- long community order.


A LIVERPOOL hospital has received a donation of £15,000 from the family of a former patient. At the age of 10, Jordan Lee’s life was turned upside down when doctors discovered a tumour the size of a tangerine on his brain.


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Women learn the skills for a healthier life back home - Warrington Guardian 15th May 2007


WOMEN who are trying to turn their lives around have been learning more about healthy eating. Cotswold House in Winsford offers single, homeless women a safe haven from their problems and the chance to rebuild their lives.

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Cumbria and Lancashire News

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THREE young mums are speaking out about the benefits of breastfeeding in a bid to encourage more to give it a go. They say that the bond it creates, health benefits it brings and the easiness mean that bottle-feeding is no longer an option.


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FRESH fears emerged this week that more families could be unwittingly involved in the Sellafield body parts scandal. New evidence was released to Angela Christie revealing that the GMB union, Sellafield bosses, coroners and doctors, all knew that organs were being removed and tested. Her father Maclolm Pattinson, a worker at the plant, died of leukaemia caused by radiation in 1971.


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Half a million pound hospital project - Blackpool Citizen 15th May 2007


A project in Blackpool to help prevent unnecessary admissions and make sure that patients are not faced with lengthy stays in hospital is to be rolled out across the resort following a £500,000 cash injection.
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Greater Manchester News

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Nursery closed in E.coli alert - Manchester Evening News 15th May 2007


A CHILD is seriously ill in hospital today after an E.coli outbreak among youngsters at a nursery. Five other children at Ambrose Nook Nursery, Oldham, were also suffering from the bug. Health bosses closed down the nursery after the children - all aged under five - were taken ill on Friday.

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