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‘People will die’: Trump administration cancels up to $1.9bn for substance use and mental health

The Trump administration on Tuesday evening unexpectedly canceled up to $1.9bn in funding for substance use and mental health care, which providers say will immediately affect thousands of patients.

“It feels like Armageddon for everyone who’s on the frontlines of the addiction and mental health space,” said Ryan Hampton, founder of Mobilize Recovery, a national advocacy organization for people in and seeking recovery.

“The scope of care that’s disrupted by these grants is catastrophic. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people will die.”

As many as 2,800 grantees through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) received a letter immediately ending their funding – about 26% of Samhsa’s entire budget.

“These are programs that save lives, so the impact could be really devastating,” said Regina LaBelle, former acting director of the Biden White House office of national drug control policy and professor at Georgetown University.

“It really covers the spectrum of prevention, treatment and recovery services, both on substance use and mental health,” said Yngvild Olsen, who until last July served as the director for the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at Samhsa and is now a national adviser at Manatt Health.

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Source: The Guardian, 14 January 2026

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New registry launched to tackle ‘Wild West’ IT market

Only around a fifth of ambient voice technology firms understood to be supplying the NHS have been included on a new national registry designed to beef up NHS England’s oversight of the market, described as the “Wild West”.

19 AVT firms have been listed on the new national registry launched today, but it is understood that over a hundred such firms operate in the competitive market.

The suppliers of the AI tools are the first to join the self-certified registry, which requires them to comply with multiple standards covering regulation, clinical safety, and data protection.

AVT software automatically transcribes conversations between patients and clinicians and generates structured medical notes, aiming to reduce the manual documentation burden on staff and free up more time for patient care.

To be listed, suppliers must demonstrate compliance with the Digital Technology Assessment Criteria, hold Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency Class I registration, and provide evidence of post-market surveillance.

Additional requirements include evidence of benefit in the NHS, the ability to integrate with existing NHS digital infrastructure and scalability across organisations of different sizes.

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Source: HSJ, 15 January 2026

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Letby trust pays £1.4m damages to ex CEO

A former NHS chief executive has been awarded £1.4m in damages after suing the health service for unfair dismissal.

Dr Susan Gilby took the Countess of Chester NHS Trust to court after being suspended in December 2022.

The compensation is one of the largest payments the NHS has ever made to a former employee.

The final cost to the taxpayer - including court costs - could be around £3m after the trust refused offers to avoid the case going to court.

Gilby told the BBC she was relieved the case was over and that this "was never about the money."

The Countess of Chester NHS Trust - where Lucy Letby worked - confirmed that a settlement had been agreed.

The compensation payment comes after an employment tribunal ruled in February last year that board members at the trust had conspired to remove her from her job.

Gilby had accused the trust's chairman, Ian Haythornthwaite, of bullying and harassment. In response, Haythornthwaite, working alongside three other directors, had set up Project Countess, to force Gilby out.

Gilby, 62, said one of the trust's directors, Ros Fallon, took her to a pub on a Friday afternoon in October 2022 and told her it was "time for you to go".

"She said: 'And if you don't agree to go, we will start a process against you'. She was unable to tell me what that process would be."

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Source: BBC News, 15 January 2026

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System criticised after death of ‘fit and well’ 23-year-old

Urgent and emergency care services in the East Midlands are letting down people with ”serious but not immediately life-threatening” conditions, a coroner has warned after the death of a “fit and well young man”.

Adam Hussain, 23, died from complicated appendicitis at the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham in May, after repeatedly asking for help for abdominal pain over the previous four days.

Mr Hussain called emergency and urgent care services five times during the days before his collapse at home on 15 May. He was sent to a walk-in-centre after his first call on 12 May then sent home, but was not seen again face to face. 

The coroner found East Midlands Ambulance Service and the Nottingham Emergency Medical Service – the system’s single urgent care triage system – had failed to recognise the need for further face-to-face assessment and necessary treatment.

She also said there was “confusion” in the system about how to manage category 3 ambulance calls, the classification for urgent but not immediately life-threatening conditions, and where triage suggests the patient can be managed at home.

Elizabeth Didcock, assistant coroner for Nottinghamshire, said: “Had Adam been seen face to face [when he sought help], it is very likely that the intra-abdominal sepsis would have been recognised and treatment provided, likely leading to him surviving what is a treatable condition in a previously fit and well young man.”

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Source: HSJ, 15 January 2026

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One in 10 patients spent over 12 hours in A&E in 2025

One in 10 patients who attended major A&E units in England last year spent more than 12 hours there, a BBC analysis shows.

During 2025, 1.75 million patients waited that long to be treated and discharged or found a bed on a ward - only marginally better than in 2024.

It comes as the Royal College of Nursing warned long waits and corridor care – where patients are left for hours in make-shift areas – was having a devastating impact.

The union published testimonies from members across the UK describing unsafe and undignified care, with one nurse saying animals were treated better at vets.

The government said it was unacceptable, but it was still dealing with the legacy it inherited.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting acknowledged corridor care remained a problem, saying the NHS was "falling short".

"It should never be normalised," he added.

He said he was committed to ending the practice before the end of the parliament and would soon start publishing data on it to ensure transparency.

But he said on some measures, such as ambulance response times, there had been improvement compared to last year.

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Source: BBC News, 15 January 2025

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Qatar launches new national patient safety classification to boost care quality

According to Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health (MoPH), the Ministry has launched the Qatar Patient Safety Classification as part of its strategic work to strengthen patient safety and improve the quality of healthcare services across the country.

MoPH said the Classification is a unified national framework for classifying and analyzing patient safety information and clinical practice excellence across all healthcare facilities in Qatar. 

The Classification serves as the scientific foundation for the National Learning System for Patient Safety Events and Practice Excellence (NLS-PSEP). MoPH noted that it will help standardise health data, strengthen national-level analysis, and support continuous quality improvement across the health system.

MoPH added that the framework aligns with Qatar National Vision 2030 and the National Health Strategy 2024–2030, and applies to all governmental, semi-governmental, and private healthcare facilities. It is intended for use by healthcare professionals, quality and patient safety teams, risk management teams, health leaders, regulators, and healthcare decision-makers.

Dr. Eman Radwan, Acting Director of MoPH’s Healthcare Quality Department, said the launch is a major step toward improving healthcare quality and building a stronger culture of safety at the system level. She also noted that a national team developed the Classification, bringing together experts in healthcare quality and patient safety from both the public and private sectors in a partnership-based, integrated approach.

MoPH explained that the Classification is intended to standardise patient safety concepts and taxonomies across the health system, strengthen national learning and reduce repeat incidents, improve risk management, enable comparative analysis and evidence-informed decision-making, and enhance transparency and public confidence in health services. MoPH also said implementation will support efforts to raise patient safety levels, strengthen a learning culture across providers, and reduce potential risks and harm at both facility and national levels.

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Source: OncoDaily, 13 January 2026

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Hospital alert after fake doctor-endorsed videos

A hospital trust in south London has issued an alert after fraudulent videos were circulated online claiming its staff endorsed weight loss products.

Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said that the videos, found on social media platforms like Facebook and TikTok, "falsely claim a number of our clinicians are using and endorsing these products".

The videos, which show doctors applying weight loss patches to their bodies and losing weight over a period of time, appear to be AI-generated, the Trust said, and do not show doctors who work there.

The BBC has approached the company and a doctor claiming to be behind the products, but has had no response.

Speaking to the BBC Dr Daghni Rajasingam, deputy chief medical officer at the Trust, said staff were "actively working" to try and get the videos taken down.

"They are fraudulent and they're misleading," Rajasingam said.

"NHS clinicians would never endorse or promote commercial products such as this."

The doctor urged the public to seek health advice on weight loss from "trusted NHS sources".

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Source: BBC News, 15 January 2025

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Plan to include pregnant women in drug trials ‘a generational change’

When Emma decided to try for a baby, she began to come off some of the medicines she relied on to manage her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. The complex condition affecting connective tissues has left the 35-year-old without a bladder and being fed via a tube into her small bowel. But there were some drugs she couldn’t safely go without. That’s when Emma realised no one could tell her for sure whether those drugs could harm her baby.

“The vast majority of the information that’s available is like, ‘To be used if there’s no other options, no research done’. And without the medication, I will end up in hospital, so I don’t really have an option but to take it,” Emma says. The lack of information left her feeling “guilt and anxiety”.

More than 90% of medicines have never been tested in pregnancy, leaving millions of women around the world making this impossible choice: go without treatment or take it without full-throated reassurance from doctors that it’s safe. This year, in the biggest step change in a generation – since the Thalidomide scandal of the 1950s and 1960s – the World Health Organisation (WHO) will begin to work with scientists, doctors and drug developers to change this.

“People have been scared to treat pregnant women since the thalidomide tragedy,” says Mariana Widmer, a maternal health scientist at WHO.

“There’s no one single organisation or one individual that can make this change. This change is huge. This takes time,” she adds. “We need collaboration and we need partnerships. And this is what we at WHO would like to do ... bring together all these players at the table and work together to make this change, that’s the only way to do it.”

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Source: The Independent, 14 January 2026

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LGB+ people in England and Wales ‘much’ more likely to die by suicide than straight people

LGB+ people are much more likely to die by taking their own lives, drug overdoses and alcohol-related disease than their straight counterparts, the first official figures of their kind show.

The 2021 census in England and Wales asked people aged 16 and above about their sexual orientation for the first time. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has now analysed differences in causes of mortality from March 2021 to November 2024. The ONS research uses the acronym LGB+ rather than LGBTQ+.

It found that people who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual or “other” sexual orientation had 1.3 times the risk of dying than those identifying as straight or heterosexual. The age-standardised rate of death from any cause was 982.8 for each 100,000 people for LGB+ people compared with 752.6 for each 100,000 people for straight or heterosexual people, the ONS said.

While the leading cause of death for all people was coronary heart disease, the second most common cause of death for LGB+ people was taking their own lives, accounting for 7.1% of all deaths.

Dr Emma Sharland, at the ONS, said: “This is the first time we have looked at differences in causes of death among adults by sexual orientation.

“There are some noticeable differences, with nearly three times as many drug poisoning deaths and close to twice as many alcohol-related deaths among the LGB+ group compared with the straight or heterosexual group.

“While this analysis does not explore causality, we hope this data will help inform health professionals and others working with different population groups.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2026

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Fifth NHS trust declares critical incident as winter bugs lead to overwhelming demand

A fifth NHS hospital trust has declared a critical incident in the last 24 hours as it is overwhelmed by demand for its services.

Nottingham University Hospitals Trust said it was facing “severe and sustained pressure” caused by rising patient numbers, winter infections and staff sickness.

The combination has led to “significant and unacceptable” delays in A&E and on hospital wards, according to trust chiefs.

A “critical incident” is the highest alert level used by the NHS, and when one is declared, hospitals may redirect resources, postpone non-urgent treatments and seek external support.

Bosses at Nottingham University Hospitals Trust pleaded with the public to go to A&E only in emergencies or serious accidents, and to use other services instead.

Patients were facing what they said were “unacceptable and lengthy” waits in corridors.

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Source: The Independent, 14 January 2026

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US is weeks away from losing its measles elimination status

As of 6 January, the CDC has confirmed 2,147 measles cases in 2025 and 2026, with North Carolina and South Carolina reporting the latest cases amid dozens of outbreaks across the U.S. 

The U.S. achieved measles elimination status in 2020, but the nation could lose this designation in late January. 

In 2025, the CDC logged 49 outbreaks across 45 states. The federal health agency has not reported on any measles-related hospitalizations or deaths in 2026. In 2025, there were 240 hospitalisations and three deaths. 

“About 11% of patients are still being hospitalized for measles, so hospitals may need to be ready to employ isolation precautions to prevent in-hospital spread,” Kaufman Hall said in a news release. 

The majority of infections are among unvaccinated individuals. A national survey conducted from 17 November to 1 December by the Annenberg Public Policy Center of Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania found a decline in the public’s perception of the safety and effectiveness of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines. In 2025, 83% of U.S. adults considered the MMR vaccine as safe, which is significantly lower than the 88% who said the same in 2022. 

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Source: Becker's Clinical Leadership, 13 January 2026

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USA: Study reveals dementia patients are prescribed risky drugs despite safety warnings

Dementia patients in the U.S. are still being prescribed risky stimulant medications despite longstanding warnings about their safety, new research has found.

For decades, clinical guidelines have discouraged giving central nervous system stimulants to older patients because they increase the risk of delirium, falls, and hospitalizations.

But in a peer-reviewed study published Monday in the American Medical Association's official journal, researchers estimated that roughly 25% of dementia patients enrolled in Medicare parts A, B, and D received at least one such "potentially inappropriate" medication between 2013 and 2021.

That description covers a wide range of drugs, including antipsychotics, barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and certain antidepressants such as doxepin and imipramine.

Across all study participants, prescriptions fell over the course of the study from around 20% to around 16%, but continued to be higher for patients with cognitive impairment as of 2021.

"While this decline was encouraging, over two-thirds of patients receiving these prescriptions lacked a documented clinical indication in 2021, the end of the study period, suggesting high levels of potentially inappropriate and harmful prescribing," said study author and UCLA medicine professor Dr. John M. Mafi.

“Compared with patients with normal cognition, we also found higher levels of prescribing among older adults with cognitive impairment, who face a higher risk of adverse effects from these drugs.

"These results underscore substantial opportunities to improve the quality and safety of care for millions of older Americans."

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Source: The Independent, 13 January 2026

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Unregistered Harley Street plastic surgeon pretended to be patient during inspection

A plastic surgeon has been suspended after performing liposuction at a private Harley Street clinic without proper registration and lying to inspectors from the health watchdog.

Dr Sayed Mia carried out gynaecomastia procedures – male breast reduction – without the necessary registration with the Care Quality Commission (CQC), a tribunal heard.

During an inspection by the CQC, it was alleged that Dr Mia claimed he was a patient and gave a fake name and contact details.

The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service has suspended him for 12 months.

The tribunal heard that on 14 November 2023, Dr Mia, who qualified in South Africa in 1999, was in consultation with a patient at the central London clinic when four CQC inspectors arrived and introduced themselves.

The tribunal heard an inspector “intercepted” Dr Mia, telling him the reason for the visit was “to establish if regulated activities were taking place at the clinic”, after receiving complaints from members of the public.

When asked for his name, Dr Mia told the inspector it was “Ahmed Munda”.

He told the inspector he was having a meeting about a procedure and claimed he was a patient.

The tribunal was told a young man waiting outside the consultation room interrupted and said: “He’s not a patient, he’s a doctor I’ve come to see.”

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Source: The Independent, 14 January 2026

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NHS spending up to £19k a time treating people suffering after overseas surgery, research finds

The NHS is spending up to almost £20,000 a time treating people who have suffered serious setbacks after having medical procedures abroad, research has found.

Hospitals are having to “pick up the pieces” when things go wrong for the growing number of Britons going overseas for weight loss surgery, breast enlargements or other operations.

As many as 53% of those who do end up with complications such as infections, organ failure and wounds that do not heal, according to a study published in the journal BMJ Open.

Some people need a stay in intensive care, further surgery and large amounts of antibiotics in order to recover from botched treatment they have paid for in another country, researchers found.

Patients have ended up in a UK hospital for as long as 45 days as a result of complications that arose after an operation to lose weight and even longer – 49 days – after cosmetic surgery.

It costs NHS hospitals between £1,058 and £19,549 to treat such cases, according to a review of evidence undertaken by Welsh researchers led by Dr Clare England of Health Technology Wales.

Prof Vivien Lees, the vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: “Too often people are drawn in by cut-price deals and glossy online marketing, only to return with serious, sometimes life-changing complications.

“When things go wrong, the NHS is left to pick up the pieces, often in emergencies and without full information about what surgery was done or by whom. That puts patients at risk and adds avoidable pressure to already stretched services.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2026

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Circumcision kits found on sale on Amazon UK as concerns grow over harm to baby boys

Circumcision kits have been found on sale on Amazon UK, highlighting lax regulation as concerns grow about deaths and serious harm to baby boys.

In December, a UK coroner issued warnings about insufficient circumcision regulation after the death in 2023 of a six-month-old boy, Mohamed Abdisamad, from a streptococcus infection.

In a prevention of future deaths report, Dr Anton van Dellen, assistant coroner for west London, highlighted how “any individual may conduct a non-therapeutic male circumcision (NTMC) without any prior training”, with “no requirement for any infection control measures [and] no requirements for any aftercare”, adding that “action should be taken to prevent future deaths”.

The Guardian found “Plastibell” kits, in various sizes, on sale for £200 on Amazon in January. A listing on the site promised “a circumcision procedure which requires no special post-operative care or dressing [which] means a significant saving in both time and money”.

It added: “The disposable PlastiBell circumcision device eliminates the need for the repetitive and costly sterilisation required for stainless steel clamps … No special dressings required.” Similar devices were on sale on eBay.

On Saturday, the Guardian reported that draft guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) classes circumcision as a potential crime. The CPS said while circumcision was legal and “for many, a safe and celebrated tradition”, it had recently prosecuted cases of “significant harm” and that “rigorous scrutiny” and “extensive consultation with different communities” was being carried out before the guidance was finalised and brought into force.

Lord Scriven, the Liberal Democrat peer who has repeatedly raised concerns in parliament about lax regulation, said: “Parliament needs to think about how it can defend a system where a tattooist requires a licence and a sterilised studio to carry out a tattoo, but a person carrying out genital surgery on a baby boy doesn’t."

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Source: The Guardian, 14 January 2026

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‘Shocking decline’ in cancer waits at laggard trusts

Nearly half of all trusts recorded a drop in their 62-day cancer performance over the past year, official data shows, as system leaders gear up to publish new national strategy.

HSJ analysed the data following NHS England elective lead Mark Cubbon telling trusts to work with their cancer alliances to improve performance in a letter to local leaders last month. HSJ also understands the new national cancer plan is due imminently. 

Mr Cubbon praised the Royal Free London Foundation Trust for its “impressive improvements” and highlighted that the trust had recorded a 21 percentage point improvement between September 2024 and September 2025.

However, the period between November 2024 and October 2025, the latest available data, shows that 57 of 118 (48%) relevant providers saw performance on the key cancer target decline, while 19 trusts recorded double-digit percentage point slumps.

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Source: HSJ, 13 January 2026

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New York City expects biggest nurses strike as nearly 15,000 set to walk off job

Thousands of nurses are set to walk off the job at several of New York City’s largest hospitals on Monday, staging a strike amid an intense flu season.

The action comes three years after a previous strike that compelled some of the same hospitals to move patients elsewhere and reroute ambulances.

Hospital operations are expected to be disrupted at a number of major private institutions, including Mount Sinai in Manhattan, Montefiore medical center in the Bronx, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving medical center.

Close to 15,000 nurses are participating, making it the biggest nurses strike the city has ever seen. Most union members voted last month to authorize the walkout.

Anticipating the possibility of a strike, New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, declared a state of emergency on Friday and urged hospital administrators and union leaders to reach a last-minute agreement. She warned that a strike “could jeopardize the lives of thousands of New Yorkers and patients”.

“I’m strongly encouraging everyone to stay at the table, both sides, management and the nurses, until this is resolved,” Hochul said.

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Source: The Guardian, 13 January 2026

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Radiographer-led pathway to improve NG tube safety launched

The Society of Radiographers is working alongside other organisations to launch a radiographer-led nasogastric (NG) tube position check pathway.

Aimed at reducing misplacement incidents and improving patient safety, the pathway has been developed with Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), the British Society of Gastrointestinal and Abdominal Radiology (BSGAR) and the British Association of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (BAPEN).

Radiographers will be trained to evaluate and record NG tube placement via X-ray, increasing efficiency and providing a safe consistent structured process. 

Once trained, radiographers can perform these evaluations autonomously in real-time, reducing delays and providing a safe consistent structured clinical evaluation recorded on the Radiology Information System.

NHS sites are being encouraged to pilot this pathway, with support from both SoR and RCR. Trusts and boards need to obtain local governance approval and work with key stakeholders to integrate the pathway into existing clinical workflows.

Continuous learning will be supported through local audits, ensuring quality and safety are maintained. Radiologists play a key role in supporting radiographers and are essential for overseeing the implementation of the pathway.

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Source: The Society of Radiographers, 26 September 2024

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Unlicensed medicines may lead to more baby deaths in England, coroner warns

More babies in England could die from issues caused by unlicensed medicines if providers are not required to report problems, a coroner has warned.

The conclusions were reached at the end of an inquest held after three infants died due to receiving contaminated feed.

The babies were all receiving hospital care after being born prematurely and died after receiving total parenteral nutrition (TPN) feed contaminated with Bacillus cereus, Southwark coroners court heard.

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Source: Guardian, 18 November 2024

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Hospital where baby died from infected feed had ‘entirely unsafe system’

An NHS trust that gave four newborn babies contaminated feed has admitted that it was operating “an entirely unsafe system” at the time they became infected.

The admission came during evidence by a senior doctor at Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust (GSTT), who led its investigation into the outbreak, during an inquest into how one of the very premature babies died.

Dr William Newsholme was answering questions last week at the inquest at Southwark coroner’s court in London into the death of Aviva Otte at St Thomas’ hospital on 2 January 2014.

Newsholme was questioned about why the results of tests carried out on samples of the baby feed on 26 December 2013 did not come back until 6 January, by which time the baby had died and three others were ill.

He was asked if he would agree that the long delay meant that “that this is an entirely unsafe system within which to be preparing parenteral nutrition for the most vulnerable cohort of patients in your hospital”.

Newsholme, a consultant in infectious diseases and the trust’s clinical lead for infection prevention and control, answered: “Yes, I would.”

The inquest is examining events surrounding the deaths of Aviva and of two other babies, nine day-old Yousef Al-Kharboush and one-month-old Oscar Barker, in an outbreak of Bacillus cereus five months later which also involved contaminated feed. Nineteen babies at nine hospitals were infected in that outbreak, three of whom died.

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Source: The Guardian, 24 September 2024

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Action needed after baby feed deaths, says coroner

A senior coroner has warned that more babies could die unless "action is taken", following the deaths of three infants who had received contaminated feed while being cared for in hospital.

Three-month-old Aviva Otte died in January 2014 after being given contaminated feed at St Thomas' Hospital, south London.

In June that year, one-month-old Oscar Barker and nine-day-old Yousef Al-Kharboush died after a similar, but separate contamination incident.

Following an inquest, Dr Julian Morris said he was concerned that St Thomas' Hospital was not legally required to report the first incident and called for a change in the law.

All three babies, who had been born prematurely, were fed through an intravenous drip, a method known as "total parenteral nutrition" (TPN).

Aviva, the first child to die, was given TPN that was made by NHS pharmacists at St Thomas' Hospital.

Oscar, who died at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge and Yousef, who also died at St Thomas' Hospital, received feed manufactured by private company ITH Pharma which supplied to several trusts.

The bacteria Bacillus cereus was found to be the contaminant in the cause of all three deaths.

In his conclusion, the senior coroner for Inner South London said he was worried that a lack of regulation around medicines such as Aviva's feed might lead to future deaths.

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Source: BBC News, 19 November 2024

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‘I lived, Maeve died’: ME patient who got help writes to coroner

A patient with severe myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) has told a coroner that the death of a young woman could have been avoided if she received the same tube feeding which has kept him alive for the past decade.

Whitney Dafoe, a 41-year-old American who suffers from the debilitating disease also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), has written a letter to Deborah Archer, the assistant coroner for South Devon, describing the death of Maeve Boothby O’Neill as a travesty.

Archer has been holding an inquest into the death of Boothby O’Neill, who died aged 27 in October 2021 after suffering with severe ME which left her bedridden and starving because she was too exhausted to eat.

Archer, who will deliver her verdict and findings on Friday, was told by NHS consultants that they could not attempt total parenteral nutrition (TPN), a type of tube feeding which bypasses the gastrointestinal tract and places nutritional fluids into a vein, because they couldn’t feed Boothby O’Neill while she was lying flat. Nor could they create “the required sterile conditions” in her bed, they said, because she couldn’t bear to be washed for periods of time.

In a letter to the court, Dafoe said that Boothby O’Neill’s death could have been avoided had she undergone the procedure. 

“Luckily, I had doctors who viewed ME/CFS as the serious physiological disease that it is, and understood that the risk of needing to take antibiotics occasionally or add a few extra steps to my daily routine was better than the certainty of death from starvation, dehydration or malnutrition, which is what killed Maeve.

“Maeve just needed a way to get nutrition into her body. I got TPN and lived. Maeve was denied TPN and died.”

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Source: The Times, 8 August 2024 

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NHS trust admits contaminated feed caused baby’s death after decade of denial

An NHS trust has admitted that a highly vulnerable baby died because of contaminated feed that it gave her, after denying that for more than a decade.

At an inquest on Tuesday, Guy’s and St Thomas’ trust said it had given Aviva Otte a nutritional product containing deadly bacteria in January 2014. It had previously insisted to her mother, a coroner and the Guardian on multiple occasions that she had died of natural causes.

The change in GSTT’s explanation of Aviva’s death came during the second day of an inquest into her death and the deaths of two other babies in a separate outbreak of Bacillus cereus five months later.

Giving evidence at Southwark coroner’s court in London, Dr Grenville Fox – a senior consultant neonatologist who worked in the neonatal unit where Aviva was treated – said that it was now his opinion that the parenteral nutrition she received was the main cause of her death.

His statement represents a significant U-turn by GSTT. It also raises questions about its conduct and honesty over the first outbreak of Bacillus cereus in late 2013 and early 2014, in which four babies including Aviva were infected, which the Guardian first revealed in June 2022.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 September 2024

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NHS faces legal action from ‘abandoned’ IV feed patients

The NHS and the national medical regulator could face legal action over the shortage of intravenous feed supplies for hundreds of UK patients, HSJ has learned. 

The law firm acting for more than a dozen patients affected by the shortage of feed supplies has confirmed to HSJ it has been instructed to take action against NHS England, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and the company responsible for producing the feed, Calea. 

Since June, hundreds of patients who rely on IV feed known as total parenteral nutrition have gone without deliveries of their bespoke feed. More than 40 people have been admitted to hospital as a result.

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Source: HSJ, 29 August 2019

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USA: Patients needing home IV nutrition fear dangerous shortages

CVS Health confirmed last year it was closing half its Coram home infusion branches and firing about 2,000 nurses, dietitians and pharmacists.

Their patients with life-threatening digestive disorders depend on parenteral nutrition, or PN — in which amino acids, sugars, fats, vitamins and electrolytes typically are pumped through a catheter into a large vein near the heart.

A day later Optum Rx, another big supplier, announced its own consolidation. Suddenly, thousands were scrambling for their complex essential drugs and nutrients.

“With this kind of disruption, patients can’t get through on the phones. They panic,” said Cynthia Reddick, a senior nutritionist laid off last summer in the CVS restructuring.

“It was very difficult. Many emails, many phone calls, acting as a liaison between my doctor and the company,” said Elizabeth Fisher Smith, a 32-year-old public health instructor in New York, whose Coram branch closed. A rare medical disorder has forced her to rely on PN for survival since 2017. “It added to my mental burden,” she said

Home and outpatient infusions in the USA are a growing business, as new drugs for chronic illness expand treatment options and enable patients, providers and insurers to avoid hospitalisation. 

But while reimbursement for expensive new drugs has attracted corporations and private equity, the industry is constrained by a lack of nurses and pharmacists. The less profitable parts of the business — and the vulnerable patients they serve — are at risk. This includes the 30,000-plus Americans who rely on parenteral nutrition — including premature infants, post-surgery patients and those with damaged bowels because of genetic defects.

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Source: The Washington Post, 6 February 2023

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