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NAPC News 18 June 2012

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Created on Monday, 18 June 2012 12:13

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NAPC News 18 June 2012

NHS Failing To Deal With Big Rise In Mentally Ill

A new report entitled: ‘How Mental Illness Loses Out In The NHS’, written by a distinguished team of economists, psychologists, doctors and NHS managers convened by Lord Layard of the London School of Economics, has found that mental illness now accounts for almost half of all ill health among people of working age.  It has the same impact on life expectancy as smoking.

According to the report, about 6 million people suffer from depression or crippling anxiety conditions, while 700,000 children have behaviour problems, anxiety or depression.  Yet three quarters receive no treatment at all, in breach of recommendations set by the regulatory National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

NHS To Remove 750 Women’s Implants

Nearly 750 women are to have faulty breast implants removed on the NHS, research indicates.  Around 47,000 British women are thought to have been given the implants manufactured by the French firm, Poly Implant Prosthese.  The cost of the operations that will be carried out by the NHS is estimated to be almost £2m, not including the cost of GP consultations and other health support.

Work Next Saturday To Clear Industrial Action Backlog, Lansley Tells GPs

The Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, has suggested that doctors should work next Saturday to clear the backlog caused by their industrial action over pensions.  Mr Lansley has written to Dr Hamish Meldrum, the Chairman of the British Medical Association, asking the union’s GP members to work on Saturday in lieu of Thursday. 

Doctors taking part in the action, which stops short of a full strike, have agreed to attend their usual places of work, but will see only urgent and emergency cases.  The dispute is over changes to pensions, which the BMA argued were unfair and unwarranted, but the Government considered would leave doctors with very generous incomes on retirement.

Rank Hospitals On Cancer Survival Rates

A cancer expert suggested that Britain’s cancer services would be improved if doctors were made to compete against each other through the ranking of hospitals on survival rates.

Professor Mike Richards thinks doctors in poorly-performing departments would be compelled to improve their services if patients had at-a-glance information.  He commented: ‘In an ideal world, we would want the equivalent of a Which? guide for cancer services.  If you can do it in other sectors, why not for cancer?’

TB Victim Told She Was Lovesick

A court inquest heard how a 15year old girl died of tuberculosis in Birmingham after ‘gross failures’ by her GP, who suggested she was just ‘lovesick’.

The coroner criticised Dr Sharad Shripadrao Pandit after hearing that Alina Sarag’s parents had called him more than 50 times about their daughter’s condition over a four and a half month period before her death in January last year.

GlaxoSmithKline

GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine against childhood meningitis, M en-Hibrix, has won approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for use among infants aged between six weeks and eighteen months.

Poison That Could Prove A Lifesaver

New research states that one of the Victorian’s favourite poisons, foxglove, can help prevent heart problems rather than just cause them.

Digitalis, the poison derived from the plant, slows the heart down, causing a severe heart attack as it struggles to send oxygen to the brain.  But in recent years, digoxin, the active ingredient in digitalis or foxglove, has been used to treat some heart patients.

Scientists have now established that digoxin can enhance the body’s protective mechanism against high blood pressure and heart failure.  Most current treatments prevent excess hormone and stress signals that can lead to high blood pressure and heart failure, but the body can do this itself through inhibitors called RGS proteins.  To unlock this mechanism, researchers at the University of Michigan used digoxin to treat engineered human kidney cells and found it created the action made by the body to prevent excess stimulation.

Fathers Gain Weight After Baby Is Born

The average British man puts on 1.6 stone after becoming a father, figures suggest.  Pressures of work and family life have been blamed, as men do less exercise and eat more take-away food due to time constraints.

The study, commissioned by Benenden Healthcare Society and the Men’s Health Forum charity, examined the lifestyle habits of 2,000 fathers.

BMI Fails To Measure Child Obesity

The number of children suffering from obesity could be greater than official figures show, research has revealed.

Data bases on Body Mass Index measurements many not show the true extent of the current childhood obesity epidemic, according to a study by Leeds Metropolitan University. 

Hundreds of children, who were not classed as being obese using BMI alone, were found to be overweight when experts looked at their waist measurements.

Nearly 15,000 children at schools in Leeds took part in the three year study comparing BMI, waist circumference and waist to height ratio.

The study of 14,697 children was conducted in collaboration with Leeds City Council.

Fake Digital Temperature Gauge Haul Seized

More than 400 counterfeit digital thermometers have been seized in raids amid fears lives were being put at risk by inaccurate readings.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency carried out raids in Harrow, North London, and Oxford throughout May.  A spokesperson said: ‘Inaccurate reading from thermometers could result in a delay to a child getting the treatment they need.’

Cracking The Habit

Cocaine and crack addicts may soon kick their habits by having an injection that prevent the drugs from having an effect.  Professor Shankar Vallabhajosula said: ‘This offers a whole new treatment paradigm for addiction.’

The vaccine, which combines a cocaine-like molecule with the common cold virus, trains the immune system so it sends out antibodies.  They bind the cocaine in blood and prevent it from reaching the brain, stopping the sought after high.

100 Doctors A Year Take £3m Pension

New official figures show that more than 100 GPs and consultants have recently retired with pension pots worth more than £3.5 m each.

The NHS figures show that 104 doctors retired last year with pension pots equivalent to £3.5 m in the private sector.  They will receive pensions of at least £78,000 a year for life.  They also received a tax free lump sum at retirement of at least £234,000.

Simon Burns, the health minister, said: ‘When the NHS pension scheme routinely pays out six figure pensions for doctors, everyone can see they system is unsustainable.’

Emergency Patients Are Losing Out In 9 To 5 NHS

Research has revealed startling differences in levels of emergency treatment in the NHS at weekends. 

The research showed that patients admitted to hospital as an emergency were most likely to be discharged on a Friday, often because consultants with the authority to send them home do not work at weekends.

Suspected heart attack victims are far less likely to be given emergency tests at weekends than on weekdays, and just a third of the number of diagnostic procedures carried out emergency patients during weekdays were undertaken at weekends.

Nurses Pay Fury

Latest NHS costs cutting plans could leave nurses without pay rises worth thousands of pounds.

The performance related pay scheme means only staff rated as ‘excellent’ will get an annual inflation-linked pay rise.  Senior nurses could lose out on more than £1,600 under the proposals.

Peter Carter, of the Royal College of Nursing, said the plans were completely unacceptable.

Stepping Hill Fears

Patients at Stepping Hill Hospital in Stockport Cheshire, are still at risk almost a year after the suspicious deaths of seven patients.

A government report is set to show inspectors, who conducted an unannounced spot check were shocked to discover medicine was still being mismanaged by staff on the wards.

NHS Fat Operation Crisis

Poor Britons on junk food diets are swamping the NHS with requests of quick fix weight reduction operations.

Shadow public health minister, Diane abbot, said: ‘It is a tragedy this fast-food, fast-op culture blights the poorest families.  A lot scarcely eat fresh food because calories have become cheap while real food is expensive’.

More than 1,094 operations were performed on the poorest ten per cent of Britons last year, and a further 2,391 on the most deprived 30 per cent.  In contrast, only 405 people in the richest ten per cent had NHS operations.