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Morning-after pill to be offered without charge at pharmacies in England

The morning-after pill will be available without charge on the NHS at pharmacies in England, the government has announced in an effort to reduce the “postcode lottery” of free access to the emergency contraception.

The morning-after pill is one of two forms of emergency contraception that women can use after having unprotected sex, or where other forms of contraception have failed. The sooner that emergency contraception is used, the more effective it is.

The new announcement aims to increase access to the morning-after pill; while it is already available for nothing from most GP surgeries, most sexual health clinics and some NHS walk-in centres, not all pharmacies offer it for nothing, with some women paying up to £30 for the medication.

The health minister Stephen Kinnock said: “Equal access to safe and effective contraception is crucial to women’s healthcare and a cornerstone of a fair society.

“Women across England face an unfair postcode lottery when seeking emergency contraception, with access varying dramatically depending on where they live. By making this available at community pharmacies, we will ensure all women can access this essential healthcare when they need it, regardless of where they live or their ability to pay.”

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Source: The Guardian, 30 March 2025-

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Morecambe Bay inquiry chief voices criticisms over East Kent hospital scandal

The failure to pass a damning report about a scandal-hit hospital trust to the care watchdog has been criticised by the man who led the inquiry into baby deaths at Morecambe Bay.

On Friday, a coroner ruled that the death of baby Harry Richford in 2017 resulted from neglect in the maternity unit of East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust.

A report by the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecologists (RCOG) completed a year earlier had warned of issues that contributed to Harry’s death, including senior doctors not showing up for their shifts. However, the report was never passed on to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), despite the recommendation of the Morecambe Bay inquiry in 2015 that relevant external reviews should be passed on to the watchdog.

Bill Kirkup, who chaired the inquiry into deaths of mothers and babies at Furness General Hospital in Barrow-in-Furness, told The Independent: “When there is sufficient concern about a service to prompt an external review, the report must be available immediately to those responsible for assuring the quality of the service. That was the reason for the recommendation of the Morecambe Bay investigation, and it is disappointing that the Care Quality Commission apparently had no sight of this report until now.”

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Source: 26 January 2020

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More work, no funding - paediatrics under pressure

Ten-week-old Carson was struggling to breathe. He was born premature, at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital in Winchester, he was tiny.

It was suspected that he had picked up an infection which his young lungs could not cope with.

The team of doctors and nurses had stabilised him but Carson needed an extra level of care. So they called in the experts, and after a short time in intensive care he recovered.

Southampton Oxford Retrieval Team, external (SORT) are a team of specialists on call 24 hours a day to collect the most poorly children and babies and take them to intensive care, supporting 27 hospitals across the south of England.

But there is a problem. There are no beds in the paediatric intensive care unit, but the team get on the road anyway.

They are lead by Michael Griksaitis, a consultant paediatric intensivist at University Hospital Southampton: "We dispatch to go and help the child whether there is a bed or not because actually it is irrelevant.

"The child still needs critical care, so bed or not the transport team would go out."

The BBC has learned that despite rising demand on these services, this year SORT will be expected to collect potentially hundreds more children who do not need critical care, but still require transport by ambulance to hospitals.

This will involve picking up potentially hundreds more children who are less sick, known as level 2 – those who need a high-dependency hospital bed – but with no more resources.

All 13 retrieval teams UK-wide will be asked to increase their workload despite already being at capacity and without extra funding.

Most hospitals don't have a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU), so the SORT team supports the 27 regional hospitals that call for help when they have done all they can to care for a child.

"Nowhere in our business case, in our funding, in our set up, were we ever planned to deal with that extra workload," Griksaitis says.

"When that happens, because it is happening, the demand on the service will increase because we'll have to move even more children to a high dependency unit."

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Source: BBC News, 4 March 2026

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More women to get contraceptive pill from chemists in England

Almost half a million women will be able to get the contraceptive pill from pharmacies in England, from next month, without the need for a GP appointment.

Treatments for urinary infections and other common conditions will also be on offer under the Pharmacy First scheme.

NHS England said it was a safe and common-sense way of making NHS services easier for patients to use.

New Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins said the changes meant "more options for women when making a choice about their preferred contraception" and would free up GP appointments.

From February, pharmacists who successfully apply to join the scheme will be able to offer advice and treatment, including antibiotics, for seven common conditions:

  • sinusitis
  • sore throat
  • earache
  • infected insect bites
  • impetigo
  • shingles
  • urinary tract infection in women.

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Source: BBC News, 16 November 2023

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More women than realised suffer pain from being conscious during caesareans, study finds

More women may suffer pain due to being conscious while undergoing caesareans or other pregnancy-related surgery under general anaesthetic than realised, a troubling new study has found.

The report, conducted by medical journal Anaesthesia, found being awake while having a caesarean is far more common than it is with other types of surgery. 

Researchers discovered that one in 256 women going through pregnancy-related surgery are aware of what was going on — a far higher proportion than the one in every 19,000 identified in a previous national audit.

If a patient is conscious at some point while under general anaesthetic, they may be able to recall events from the surgery such as pain or the sensation of being trapped, the researchers said.

While the experiences generally only last for a few seconds or minutes, anaesthetists remain highly concerned.

Women also felt tugging, stitching, feelings of dissociation and not being able to breathe - with some suffering long-term psychological damage that often involved characteristics of post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Source: The Independent, 13 January 2021

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More women investigated for illegal terminations, says abortion provider

An unprecedented number of women are being investigated by police on suspicion of illegally ending a pregnancy, the BBC has been told.

Abortion provider MSI says it knows of up to 60 criminal inquiries in England and Wales since 2018, compared with almost zero before.

Some investigations followed natural pregnancy loss, File on 4 found.

Pregnancy loss is investigated only if credible evidence suggests a crime, the National Police Chiefs' Council says.

File on 4 has spoken to women who say that they have been "traumatised" and left feeling "suicidal" following criminal investigations lasting years.

Speaking for the first time, one woman described how she had been placed under investigation after giving birth prematurely, despite maintaining that she had never attempted an abortion.

Dr Jonathan Lord, medical director at MSI, which is one of the UK's main abortion providers, believes the "unprecedented" number of women now falling under investigation may be linked to the police's increased awareness of the availability of the "pills by post" scheme - introduced in England and Wales during the Covid-19 lockdown. Scotland also introduced a similar programme.

These "telemedicine" schemes, which allow pregnancies up to 10 weeks to be terminated at home, remain in effect. Campaigners are concerned that it is possible for women to knowingly or unknowingly use the pills after this point.

MSI's Dr Lord says criminal investigations and prosecutions further "traumatise" women after abortions, and that women deserve "compassion" rather than "punishment".

"These women are often vulnerable and in desperate situations - they need help, not investigation and punishment," he says.

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Source: BBC News, 20 February 2024

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More women and newborns survive than ever before

Developments in healthcare mean more women and babies are surviving than ever before, a new study has found.

The report, published by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), found maternal deaths have decreased by more than a third since 2000. Deaths of children were found to have fallen by almost half in the same time period.

There was a 56% decrease in deaths of children younger than 15 since 1990 – from 14.2 million deaths to 6.2 million in 2018. 

But the research still found a pregnant woman or a newborn baby dies every 11 seconds from causes that are predominantly preventable and avoidable – with 2.8 million estimated to die every year.

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Source: The Independent, 19 September 2019

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More weight-loss drugs could be offered as part of new diabetes care

Treatment for millions of people with type 2 diabetes should be more personalised, with greater access to newer medicines, including weight-loss drugs, the healthcare assessment body for England, Wales and Northern Ireland has recommended.

It calls the move "the biggest shake-up" in type 2 diabetes care in a decade.

Offering more people the new drugs will prevent complications such as heart disease, strokes and kidney damage, reduce costs to the NHS and potentially save lives, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) says.

Around 4.6 million people in the UK are diagnosed with diabetes - of these 90% have type 2, with another 1.3 million likely to be undiagnosed.

NICE, which produces guidance for the NHS on how to give patients the best care, recommends a move away from a "one size fits all" approach and towards more personalised treatment.

It is calling for newer diabetes medicines called SGLT-2 inhibitors, which protect the heart and kidneys as well as lowering blood sugar levels, to become the first-choice treatment for all diabetes patients. Around 2.3 million people will be eligible for these drugs.

Some 22,000 lives could be saved if 90% of all diabetes patients were prescribed them, NICE says, but access is not equal across the UK. There is evidence that women, older people and black people are less likely to be prescribed them.

"There is some urgency to find ways to increase the uptake of SGLT-2 inhibitors because if we were to achieve perfect uptake, the nation would be significantly healthier," said Dr Waqaar Shah, chair of the guideline committee.

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Source: BBC News, 20 August 2025

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More US states report measles cases amid vaccine misinformation

More US states are reporting measles cases as the Texas outbreak expands, surpassing last year’s total, amid vaccine misinformation and hesitancy.

The Texas outbreak could take a year to get under control, one health official said – during which time it may spread to more states. 

“I never thought in 2025, we would be looking at this resurgence of measles,” said Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health. “And I didn’t know it’d be in my backyard, either.”

On Thursday, several other states reported updates on measles. Ohio reported its first case of 2025 and Maryland announced two new cases. Both states have linked the cases to international travel. Alabama also announced that an unvaccinated child with measles travelled through the state, while Kansas has confirmed eight cases of measles among children this month.

Health departments in cities like Lubbock, where the hospitalised children with measles are being treated, have created mass vaccination clinics where anyone can get the MMR vaccine free of charge.

“We’re trying to remove every single barrier to get vaccinated,” Wells says. “And then we’re working more with messaging from trusted leaders about the importance of vaccination.”

But so far, the Lubbock clinic has only given out about 300 more vaccines than they usually would over the past few weeks.

Without widespread vaccination, the outbreak could continue for another year, she says. Other recent outbreaks have been in densely populated areas, but these cases are spread over 11 counties in Texas, plus New Mexico and Oklahoma.

“We have a large, spread-out population where we’re going to keep seeing measles pop up,” Wells says. “It’s going to take a lot of time to change the perception of vaccines, get people vaccinated, and then get to a point where there won’t be any vulnerable people left for measles to find.”

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Source: The Guardian, 23 March 2025

 

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More than two-fifths of people in Britain have chronic pain by mid-40s

More than two-fifths of people in Britain suffer from some form of chronic pain by the time they are in their mid-40s, research suggests.

Scientists have found that persistent bodily pain at this age is also associated with poor health outcomes in later life – such as being more vulnerable to Covid-19 infection and experiencing depression.

The findings, published in the journal Plos One, suggest chronic pain at age 44 is linked to very severe pain at age 51 and joblessness in later life.

Study co-author Professor Alex Bryson, of University College London’s Social Research Institute, said: “Chronic pain is a very serious problem affecting a large number of people.

“Tracking a birth cohort across their life course, we find chronic pain is highly persistent and is associated with poor mental health outcomes later in life including depression, as well as leading to poorer general health and joblessness.

“We hope that our research sheds light on this issue and its wide-ranging impacts, and that it is taken more seriously by policymakers.”

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Source: The Independent, 2 November 2022

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More than one million waiting for mental health treatment with one in 10 doctor posts empty

One in 10 posts for consultant psychiatrists in England are vacant with growing waiting times for people needing mental health treatment, experts have warned.

A census of the current situations across England by the Royal College of Psychiatrists has found there is just one psychiatrist for every 12,567 people in England.

Health service bosses at NHS England have acknowledged there are an estimated 1.5 million people who are waiting for mental health support amid fears the situation will worsen as the effects of the Covid pandemic become clear. This is on top of the 5.6 million patients waiting for routine operations and treatments for physical illness.

The Royal College said there was a shortage of 568 empty consultant posts in the NHS out of a total of 5,367 which it said meant patients would have to wait longer for treatment. In total there are 4,500 full time consultants working in the NHS.

The highest rates of unfilled positions are in the fields of addiction, eating disorders and child and adolescent psychiatry.

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Source: The Independent, 6 October 2021

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More than one million people to get ‘life-changing’ weight loss drugs to prevent heart attacks and strokes

More than a million people with heart disease could be prescribed weight loss jabs on the NHS to prevent them from having heart attacks or strokes.

Sold under the brand name Wegovy and made by Novo Nordisk, the weekly jab is a type of drug called a GLP-1 receptor agonist. It works by mimicking the natural hormone which regulates blood sugar, appetite and digestion.

The drug can be prescribed to lower blood sugar in people living with type 2 diabetes, but can also help people to lose weight and has been shown to work directly on the heart and blood vessels.

Now the NHS’s spending watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), has given the green light to give semaglutide to overweight and obese patients living with certain heart and circulatory conditions.

It is expected that 1.2 million people across England could benefit.

Naveed Sattar, Professor of Cardiometabolic Medicine at the University of Glasgow, said the move was a “genuine win–win” that will improve patients’ quality of life.

“We now have medicines that not only reduce heart attacks, strokes, and peripheral arterial disease, but also simultaneously lead to meaningful weight loss – which in turn lowers the risk of many weight‑related conditions,” Prof Sattar said.

“Given that so many people living with cardiovascular disease also struggle with excess weight, it’s no longer sufficient to focus solely on lipids and blood pressure. We must also address weight directly if we want to deliver the best possible outcomes for our patients,” he added.

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Source: The Independent, 1 April 2026

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More than one in 10 women are taking weight-loss jabs, survey finds

More than one in 10 women are taking weight-loss jabs, research has suggested.

Some 11 per cent of women aged 30 to 75 said they were taking a weight-loss jab, a survey by Juniper, a digital weight-loss service, found. Extrapolating the results across the UK would mean that about two million of the almost 20 million women within the age group are using the drugs.

The injections, which include semaglutide, known by brand names Ozempic and Wegovy, have been made popular by famous faces including Elon Musk and Boris Johnson.

But concerns have been raised about people—and young women in particular—not eligible for them under NHS rules obtaining them privately.

Lottie Moss, the 26-year-old half-sister of Kate Moss, was taken to hospital after the jabs made her violently ill when she used them despite being a healthy weight.

And health authorities have been forced to issue safety warnings about fake pens being distributed. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has urged people to be aware of fake pharmacy websites and social ­media posts offering the medicines without a prescription. The regulator said ­criminals would go to great lengths to make their businesses appear authentic and the products that they sell could ­contain “toxins and other ingredients that could cause real harm”.

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Source: The Telegraph, 15 January 2025

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More than half of UK births now involve medical intervention, audit finds

More than half of women having a baby in Britain now do so with the help of medical intervention, an audit of NHS maternity care has revealed.

Of the 592,594 births that took place in 2023, 50.6% involved either a caesarean section or the use of instruments such as forceps or a ventouse suction cup.

The increasing regularity of medical intervention is largely down to the sharp rise in caesarean births, in which the baby is delivered during an operation.

The proportion of babies born that way across England, Scotland and Wales has risen from 25% in 2015-16 to 38.9% in 2023, according to the National Maternity and Perinatal Audit (NMPA).

Dr Shuby Puthussery, an associate professor in maternal and child health at the University of Bedfordshire, said: “It’s worrying that over 50% of births involved medical intervention. But it’s linked to a broader demographic trend.

“We see a rather worrying trend of births to [older] women increasing year by year, along with significant increases in factors such as obesity, maternal diabetes and pre-existing medical conditions, leading to more complex medically assisted births, especially among women from ethnic minority groups and those living in poverty.”

Better access to antenatal care, especially scans, would help detect problems earlier and reduce the risk of mothers needing medical assistance while in labour, she said.

However, Prof Asma Khalil, the vice-president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), disagreed that a caesarean increases the risk faced by women.

“Caesarean births are common and the steady increase isn’t necessarily a cause for concern as long as future services are well-prepared to adapt and ensure they have the right staffing, training and facilities to manage increasingly complex births.

“The caesarean birthrate in England has steadily increased over the past decade. One factor in this is the increasing proportion of pregnancies that are complex.

“We are seeing national rising rates of obesity and people choosing to have children at a later stage in their life, both of which can increase the chance of complications.”

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Source: The Guardian, 11 September 2025

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More than half of staff say EPRs make their job harder

More than half of NHS staff using an electronic patient record system say it made their job harder and they lacked necessary training, a survey has found.

The Health Foundation has published a report on staff experience of electronic patient records (EPR). A survey for the work found 53% said the introduction of an EPR had made their work more difficult.

A third of respondents said they thought EPR systems were not currently working well, but that they could see there would be benefits in future.

Common reported problems included differences between systems, making work more complicated, a lack of real-time support when issues occurred, and a lack of training to help staff use systems. The findings mirror the conclusions drawn in the 10-Year Health Plan that “Clinical systems often provide a poor and inefficient user experience requiring multiple clicks to set the next step in the care process.”

Only 46% of the 1,725 respondents to the Health Foundation’s survey said they had received basic training on how to use their EPR system, while just 28% said they had received additional training on how to gain insights from EPR data.

Alex Lawrence, an improvement fellow at the Health Foundation and one of the report’s authors, said that NHS staff “are experiencing barriers and… frustrations” with using EPRs, but that overall, they “do feel positively about these systems”.

She said: “[Staff] either think that [EPRs] are delivering value now or they’re going to deliver value in the future. They think they have improved safety; they think they have improved care.

“That positivity and that momentum is not going to last forever and needs to be capitalised on as soon as possible. The longer these frustrations continue, the more that positivity is going to be eroded, and at the moment, there’s a lot that could be done to improve these systems.”

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Source: HSJ, 24 March 2026

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More than half of NHS paramedics suffering from burnout

Over half of paramedics are suffering from burnout caused by “overwhelming” workloads, record numbers of 999 calls and the public misusing the ambulance service, a study has found.

Frontline crew members also blame lack of meal breaks, delays in reaching seriously ill patients and their shift often not ending when it should for their high levels of stress and anxiety.

The working lives of ambulance staff are so difficult that nine out of 10 display symptoms of “depersonalisation”, characterised by “cynicism, detachment and reduced levels of empathy” when dealing with patients who need urgent medical treatment.

The widespread poor mental welfare of paramedics is a problem for the NHS because it is leading to some quitting, thus exacerbating its shortage of ambulance personnel, the authors said.

The findings, published in the Journal of Paramedic Practice, have prompted concern that the demands on crews, alongside the injury, violence and death they encounter, are storing up serious mental health problems for them, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Ambulance staff are passionate about their role. However, burnout is a significant and very real issue that decreases staff efficacy and reduces quality of patient care,” the study said. It was undertaken by Rachel Beldon, who works for the Yorkshire ambulance service, and Joanne Garside, a professor and school strategic director of Huddersfield university’s health and wellbeing academy.

“Participants wanted better resources and staffing levels. The current workload appeared to be overwhelming and negatively affected their mental health and work-life balance.”

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Source: The Guardian, 6 February 2022

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More than half of humans on track to be overweight or obese by 2035

More than half of the world’s population will be overweight or obese by 2035 unless governments take decisive action to curb the growing epidemic of excess weight, a report has warned.

About 2.6 billion people globally – 38% of the world population – are already overweight or obese. But on current trends that is expected to rise to more than 4 billion people (51%) in 12 years’ time, according to research by the World Obesity Federation.

Without widespread use of tactics such as taxes and limits on the promotion of unhealthy food, the number of people who are clinically obese will increase from one in seven today to one in four by 2035. If that happens, almost 2 billion people worldwide would be living with obesity. Evidence shows that obesity increases someone’s risk of cancer, heart disease and other diseases.

Prof Louise Baur, the federation’s president, said the stark findings were “a clear warning that by failing to address obesity today, we risk serious repercussions in the future.

“It is particularly worrying to see obesity rates rising fastest among children and adolescents.”

Countries need to take “ambitious and coordinated action” as part of a “robust international response” to tackle the growing health and economic crisis that obesity involves, the federation believes.

“Governments and policymakers around the world need to do all they can to avoid passing health, social and economic costs on to the younger generation,” Baur added.

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Source: The Guardian, 2 March 2023

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More than half of England’s coronavirus-related deaths will be people from care homes

Care home residents are on course to make up more than half the deaths caused directly or indirectly by the coronavirus crisis in England, according to a new analysis.

The study warns that the death toll by the end of June from OVID-19 infections and other excess deaths is “likely to approach 59,000 across the entire English population, of which about 34,000 (57%) will have been care home residents”.

The estimate, produced by the major healthcare business consultancy LaingBuisson, includes people who list a care home as their primary residence, wherever they died – including those who died in hospital.

It is based on data from the Office for National Statistics, as well as the analyst’s own modelling of the number of care home resident deaths likely to have occurred in the absence of the pandemic.

The new study coincides with mounting concerns over the failure to protect care homes earlier in the pandemic. Senior care industry figures point to the decision to move some hospital patients back to care homes in mid-March. There have also been complaints that non-Covid-related healthcare became less accessible to homes during the height of the pandemic, leading to extra deaths.

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Source: The Guardian, 7 June 2020

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More than half of England’s army veterans have health problems

More than half of England’s army veterans have experienced mental or physical health issues since returning to civilian life, and some are reluctant to share their experiences, a survey has revealed.

The survey of 4,910 veterans, commissioned jointly by the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and the Office for Veterans’ Affairs (OVA), found that 55% have experienced a health issue potentially related to their service since leaving the armed forces. Over 80% of respondents said their condition had got worse since returning to civilian life.

One in seven of those surveyed said they had not sought help from a healthcare professional. A preference for managing issues alone and the belief that their experience would not be understood by a civilian health professional were the most common reasons given.

This fear of being misunderstood is demonstrated by the finding that 63% of veterans said they would be more likely to seek help if they knew their GP practice was signed up to the Veteran Friendly Accreditation scheme.

More than 3,000 of England’s 6,313 GP practices are accredited, but the survey’s findings have prompted the RCGP – with NHS England and the OVA – to launch an initiative to get more GP practices on to the scheme.

Practices that sign up will be provided with a “simple process” for identifying, understanding and supporting veterans and, where appropriate, referring them to dedicated veterans’ physical and mental health and wellbeing services.

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Source: The Guardian, 25 March 2024

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More than half of ambulance workers have seen patient die because of delay

More than half of ambulance workers have seen a patient die because of a delay in reaching them after a 999 call or overcrowding in A&E, a new survey has found.

The findings, from a survey of frontline paramedics and other ambulance staff, are another stark illustration of the patient safety risks created by the crisis in NHS urgent and emergency care.

“These findings are utterly terrifying,” said Rachel Harrison, the national secretary of the GMB union, which sought the views of more than 1,200 members working in NHS ambulance services in England and Wales.

It asked them if they had ever witnessed a death that had occurred because of a delay involving an ambulance or other part of the care system. Just over half (53%) said they had done so and another 30% were aware of it happening with a colleague.

The findings are disclosed in a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary being shown this Thursday about how long delays in ambulance crews handing over patients to A&E staff, and thus being unable to respond quickly to 999 calls, are affecting both patients and staff.

“The delay and dilation of care that we see is just unconscionable,” Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the programme.

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Source: The Guardian, 6 March 2023

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More than half of adults worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050

More than half of adults and a third of children and young people worldwide will be overweight or obese by 2050, posing an “unparalleled threat” of early death, disease and enormous strain on healthcare systems, a report warns.

Global failures in the response to the growing obesity crisis over the past three decades have led to a staggering increase in the numbers affected, according to the analysis published in the Lancet.

There are now 2.11 billion adults aged 25 or above and 493 million children and young people aged five to 24 who are overweight or obese, the study shows. That is up from 731 million and 198 million respectively in 1990.

Without urgent policy reform and action, the report says, more than half of those aged 25 or above worldwide (3.8 billion) and about a third of all children and young people (746 million) are forecast to be affected by 2050.

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Source: The Guardian, 3 March 2025

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More than half of A&Es provide substandard care, says watchdog

More than half of A&E units are providing substandard care because they are understaffed and cannot cope with an ongoing surge in patients, the NHS watchdog has said.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) said 44% of emergency departments in England required improvement and another 8% were inadequate, its lowest rating. Last year 48% of A&Es fell into the two ratings brackets combined.

Prof Ted Baker, the CQC’s chief inspector of hospitals, said A&Es were getting overloaded because too few NHS services existed outside hospitals, meaning patients’ health could worsen. He said: “There needs to be a system-wide change: people need to get the care they need in the community… so they do not need to attend A&E unnecessarily,.."

Dr Katherine Henderson, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “As well as more patients coming to emergency departments due to a lack of accessible alternatives, there are fewer and fewer staffed beds in hospitals to admit sick patients to, which results in long waits for patients and overcrowded emergency departments. It is little wonder just over half of urgent and emergency services are rated as needing to improve.”

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Source: The Guardian, 15 October 2019

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More than a third of US counties lack obstetric care as services are deemed unprofitable

More than a third of the 3143 counties in the US are maternity “deserts” without a hospital or birth centre that offers obstetric care and without any obstetric providers—and the situation is getting worse, says a report from the March of Dimes organisation.

Maternity deserts have increased by 2% since the 2020 report, said the organisation which seeks to improve the health of women and babies. Care is diminishing where it is needed most—especially in rural areas. It affects nearly seven million women of childbearing age and about half a million babies.

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Source: BMJ, 17 October 2022

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More than a quarter of ambulance staff ‘sexually harassed by public’

More than 58,000 NHS staff reported sexual assaults and harassment from patients, their relatives and other members of the public in 2023 in the health service’s annual survey.

For the first time ever, the NHS staff survey for England asked workers if they had been the target of unwanted sexual behaviour, which includes inappropriate or offensive sexualised comments, touching and assault.

Of the 675,140 NHS staff who responded, more than 84,000 reported sexual assaults and harassment by the public and other staff last year.

About 1 in 12 (58,534) said they had experienced at least one incident of unwanted sexual behaviour from patients, patients’ relatives and other members of the public in 2023.

Almost 26,000 staff (3.8%) also reported unwanted sexual behaviour from colleagues.

Rates were highest among ambulance workers, with more than 27% reporting sexual harassment from the public and just over 9% from colleagues.

The survey also found record numbers of health workers experienced discrimination, including racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism, from patients and colleagues last year.

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Source: The Guardian, 7 March 2024

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More than a million of us are suffering with long Covid – yet still it’s not taken seriously

Nearly two years into the pandemic, people like me are still out of action. We need better support and more funding, writes Joanna Herman, consultant in infectious diseases in London.

Joanna caught Covid in March 2020, and was by definition a “mild” case: not admitted to hospital and no risk factors for severe disease, but how it has affected her and her  family is anything but mild. Having been fit and active, Joanna now finds that on bad days that she still struggle with everyday chores, and her usually quick-firing brain "remains in slo-mo ('brain fog')".

For many months, it has felt as though long Covid has not been on the political agenda, but many people are still struggling with their everyday lives, and struggling to get the help they need. Why is long Covid not included in the daily statistics, or as one of the main incentives to avoid Omicron, and to get a vaccine and booster jab? It’s never mentioned, and it often feels as if sufferers don’t exist.

Even if the new variant results in milder disease than previous ones, could more people still end up like Joanna? And how will an already stretched NHS cope if there are new cases of long Covid after this current viral surge? There’s a lot we still don’t know about Omicron; a fuller picture will become evident over the coming weeks and months...

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Source: The Guardian, 22 December 2021

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