NAPC News 16 May 2012

NHS Spends £1m A Week On Repeat Abortions

According to statistics disclosed by the Department of Health, the NHS is spending about £1million a week on abortions on women who have already had one or more terminations.

Government Is Cutting Nursing Numbers By Stealth

The largest nursing union said yesterday that savage cuts to nursing were stretching resources to breaking point.

Government plans to shift care out of hospital and closer to patients’ homes are being used as a cover for the cuts, the Royal College of Nursing has warned. It is also leading to patients being discharged too early, the RCN suggested.

Over 26,000 nursing posts have been cut in the last two years and a further 61,000 are at risk, according to the RCN.

Illegal Access Of Records Routine At Public Bodies

According to government records, medical and social security records kept by public bodies are being unlawfully or inappropriately accessed dozens of times a month and hundreds of civil servants disciplined for data offences.

Elderly Face Revolving Door Hospital Care Under Nursing Cuts

The Royal College of Nursing issued a warning this week that cuts to community nursing services would lead to elderly patients facing ‘a revolving door’ being shuttled between hospital and home.

IVF Clinics Putting Money Before Safety

Experts have said that IVF clinics in the UK are practising aggressive fertility treatments that are putting women and babies at unjustified risk.

The commercially driven industry uses unnecessary procedures, high doses of powerful drugs and risky interventions to help desperate couples spending thousands of pounds to conceive. But a milder, safer approach to IVF could provide equivalent success rates over a longer period at a lower cost and could enable the NHS to double the number of patients treated for the same budget.

The UK is lagging behind other countries in adopting the approach, experts say.

Third Of GPs Failing To Talk About Dying Patients’ Last Wishes

A study released by the Dying Maters Coalition has found that a third of family doctors fail to talk to dying patients about their wishes.

Many doctors are ignoring national guidelines in establishing their end of life preferences, such as whether they want to die at home or in hospital.

The ComRes study of 2,000 adults and 1,000 GPs found that only a third of people had made a will and fewer than one in ten had written down their wishes in case they became incapable of making their own decisions.

Lansley To Look Again At Traffic Light Food Labels

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, is beginning a three month consultation into a single food labelling system to be introduced to help people choose more healthy products.

Lansley Jeered Over Pay And Cuts

Andrew Lansley stood firm this week on changes to NHS pay and pension at the Royal College of Nursing Congress this week.

The minister was jeered when he insisted that frontline staffing had been maintained or increased while management posts had been cut over the past two years, and was challenged over claims that care was not suffering due to cost savings.

MRSA Spreads From Big Cities

A study has revealed that hospitals in large cities act as a breeding ground for the superbug, MRSA, before it spreads across the country.

Researchers found evidence that variants of the potentially deadly infection found in smaller regional hospitals probably originated from larger city hospitals.

The University of Edinburgh study looked at the genetic makeup of around 80 variants of a major clone of MRSA found in hospitals.

Sales To EU Causing Drug Shortages At Home

A report by the all-party Pharmacy Group has found that patients are being put at risk by shortages of medicines because the Government has put EU law ahead of safety.

The MPs have called for a ban on the export to Europe of medicines that are in short supply, even if this risks another confrontation with Brussels.

It blames the persistent shortages of some drugs on speculators profiteering by diverting drugs from Britain to European markets, where prices are higher.

The Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency faced criticism yesterday for not knowing which medicines were in short supply, and for failing to identify the companies that were engaged in exports.

Health Chiefs Were Warned of Breast Implant Danger

An inquiry led by Lord Howe, the Health Minister, found that a surgeon warned the health regulator that PIP implants were so prone to rupturing that ‘countless’ numbers of them had broken in his hands while he was showing them to patients.

The warnings were revealed in a review into the way the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the Department of Health handled the crisis last year.

Professor Sir Kent Woods, the chief executive of the Agency said: ‘We sympathise with all the women affected......we will act quickly to implement the recommendations and use the lesson learned to improve the regulatory system for medical devices in the UK and Europe.

Desk bound Young Workers At Risk Of Fatal Blood Clots

A survey by the charity, Lifeblood, has warned that young office workers are doubling their risk of suffering deep vein thrombosis because they work without a break, eat at their desks and then spend their evenings on the sofa.

After sitting for 90 minutes the blood flow at the back of the knees drops by half, doubling the chances of developing a blood clot, according to the charity.

About 60,000 potentially fatal blood clots are recorded in Britain each year. Professor Beverley Hunt, the medical director of Lifeblood, said: ‘The body is designed for the caveman lifestyle. Instead we have become increasingly sedentary, obstructing the body’s ability to function as it should.’

Winning The War On Cancer As Death Rates Tumble 40%

New treatments, less smoking and better screening and diagnosis have helped to cut death rates from cancer to the lowest in 40 years.

Cancer Research UK said deaths among sufferers aged 50-59 had fallen from 310 for every 100,000 people in 1971 to 185 two years ago., a 40 per cent drop.

The dramatic drop is down to a combination of factors. For example, better chemotherapy has led to improved survival rates in testicular cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma case. Other factors include falling smoking rates, the introduction of screening, better diagnosis, new drugs such as tamoxifen, more effective radiotherapy and improved NHS treatment.

Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: ‘It is thanks to the generosity of the public, who fund all our research, and the dedicated work of all our doctors and scientists that we are seeing such encouraging reductions. But there is still much more to do.’

New Operation For Young Epileptics

Children with severe epilepsy that does not respond to drugs are to be offered brain surgery to control their seizures, the NHS has announced.

Until now only a small number of specialist operations have been done at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. But new centres at Birmingham, North Bristol and Alder Hey in Liverpool will offer the treatment to more than 300 children a year.

Obesity Legacy Of Mums To Be

Researchers have claimed that overweight mothers to be could be condemning their unborn children to decades of ill health. Babies whose mothers were carrying extra pounds when pregnant were more likely to be fat and unhealthy as adults, researchers said. The adults whose mothers were most overweight before becoming pregnant were heavier than the sons and daughters of the lightest women.

Concern about the issue is so high that British doctors have started to medicate babies in the womb. In an NHS trail, overweight mothers to be in four cities are being given the diabetes drug, metaformin, in an attempt to stop their babies being born obese. If the trial is a success, the treatment could become widespread in use within five years.