NAPC News 10 September 2010

NAPC News

This week saw the completion of a joint project, which in a couple of weeks, will be made available to NAPC members. Watch this space.

Meetings also took place with a range of organisations - most of whom have a strong interest in GP Commissioning.

A further meeting took place to discuss the most recent version of NAPC's 2010 Annual Conference programme and to refine some of the details. We look forward to seeing you there. This year promises to surpass the success of last year's lively 2009 event and already delegate numbers and exhibitors had exceeded last year's final figures.

Eleven Experts Fail To Diagnose Stomach Cancer In Mother

Angela Skeffington claimed that 10 hospital doctors and her own GP failed to diagnose that she was suffering from stomach cancer. Ms Skeffington, of Yardley, Birmingham, said medics misdiagnosed her tumour as period pains, depression and even indigestions. Furthermore, she said she was made to feel ‘like a nuisance' by medical staff at Heartlands Hospital, Birmingham, and her own GP..

Heart of England Foundation Trust, which runs Heartlands Hospital, said it was investigating the claims.

Crisis In Maternity After Brussels Rules Cut Doctors' Hours

Senior doctors have warned that a cut in junior doctors' working hours, combined with rising birth rates, will cause a crisis on labour wards. The British Medical Association has also warned that junior doctors are spending more time on administration than training on the wards.

£200m Swine Flu Waste

More than £200 million was lost on excess stocks of swine flu vaccine and antivirals, accounts from the Department of Health show. Antivirals worth £73 million have been written off because there is no evidence that they were stored properly.

Goldman Banker Forsakes Mega-Mergers For GSK

Simon Dingemans, a senior Goldman Sachs banker, is to join GlaxoSmithKline as chief financial officer. He will leave his role as head of European M&A at Goldman Sachs to replace Julian Heslop at GSK next year. It is understood that he will advised Andrew Witty, GSK Chief Executive, on strategy as the pharmaceutical company tries to boost the number of drugs ready to go on sale and slim down its research and development operations.

Mr. Dingemans appointment has increased speculation that GSK could be the next leading pharmaceutical company to make a big acquisition.

Scientists On Cable Over Funding Cuts

Lord Rees, the President of the Royal Society, has complained that government plans to cut public funds of research were depressing and a signal that the UK was no longer a country aspiring to scientific leadership. Lord Rees stressed, however, that science was an enterprise in which the UK was strong. ‘Other nations, including the US, are raising their expenditure, as the same time as our government plans to cut ours. This will make the UK less attractive to mobile talent', he said.

GSK Quizzed Over Drug

The European Medicines Agency is asking GlaxoSmithKline further questions about its diabetes drug, Avandia, before giving a final verdict this month on whether it should stay on the market.

Medical Testing On Great Apes Banned

The use of great apes in scientific testing is to be banned across the European Union. The new rules were agreed after a two-year debate aimed at ensuring that alternatives to testing on animals were used and that pain was reduced.

Vitamin B Supplements Could Delay Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease

A study conducted at Oxford University has concluded that consuming daily supplements of B vitamins helps people retain more of their mental faculties if they develop Alzheimer's disease.

David Smith, a professor emeritus in Oxford University's pharmacology department and his colleagues at the Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing, gave one group of people with mild cognitive impairment daily tablets comprising folic acid, vitamin B6 and vitamin B12, and another group a placebo. After two years participants' brains were examined using MRI scanners and their mental faculties assess using tests of cognition. Some participants in the Oxford University trial saw their neurological decline reduces by as much as half after using B vitamins.

Campaign To Tackle Soaring STD Rate Among Over-50s

Next week the first national campaign to persuade the over 50s to practice safe sex is to be launched, after figures showed an alarming rise in sexually transmitted infections among older people.

Health charity, FPA, formerly the Family Planning Association, will use fashion adverts from the 1960s and 70s to encourage members of the ‘baby boomers' generation to use condoms.

GP And Midwife Vacancies Rising

The NHS is finding filling vacancies for GPs and midwives in England tougher than for any other job within the public healthcare sector, figures have revealed.

Long-term job vacancy rates have dropped for most NHS roles, but GPs and midwives continue to be difficult to recruit and the number of unfilled posts has increased.

In its GP Practice Vacancies survey 2010, the NHS Information Centre showed its number of unfilled GP jobs was about 2.1% (125) compared with 1.6% (79) last year.

At the same time, vacancy rates for medical and dental staff, which included hospital doctors and dentists, have fallen to 4.4% from 5.2% a year ago.

And a three month vacancy rate for midwives, which smooths out any seasonal fluctuations in employment levels, has shown unfilled jobs have risen to 1.2% (255) compare to 1% (191) in the previous year.

Vitamin May Help Prevent Spina Bifida

Scientists have begun a study to determine if any everyday vitamin supplement could help prevent one of Britain's most common birth defects.

Every year, about 100 children in the UK are born with spina bifida and other neural tube defects. Prospective mothers are advised to take folic acid as a way of preventing the condition.

However, scientists think the vitamin, inositol, taken with folic acid, may be more effective at preventing defects.

Despite taking folic acid, also known as vitamin B9, some women still go on to have children with neural tube defects. Many more pregnancies are terminated when the condition is diagnosed by ultrasound scan. Scientists now think inositol could prevent these extra cases.

Tests on mice suggest it stimulates tissue growth in the embryo to prevent neural tube defects. Dr Nick Greene is one of the researchers working on the project at the Institute of Child Health, University College London. He said that inositol was a naturally occurring molecule, a bit like glucose. It could be found in meat, fruit and vegetables. He said: ‘We don't think the women are deficient in inositol in their diets, but from our experimental work, we know inositol can stimulate cells in the developing embryo to proliferate more quickly, and that corrects the defect that would develop with spina bifida.

NHS IT Costs To Be Cut By £700m

The government has announced £700m of savings in the national IT programme for the NHS in England, cutting the overall costs from £12.7bn to £11.4bn. The cuts come on top of £600 mn of saving already announced by the previous government.

The programme was designed to create a national computer infrastructure for the health service. It includes the electronic booking of appointments, digital X-rays and electronic prescriptions.
In a statement, the government said all existing contracts for part of the IT programme would be honoured. The remaining parts, creating a fully computerised NHS in England, would be carried out locally. This would allow individual hospitals to buy in computer systems as long as they were able to work with the existing national structure.