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‘We’re on the edge of chaos’: families with trans kids fight for care as bans take hold

Aryn Kavanaugh was sitting in her living room in South Carolina when her 17-year-old daughter came into the room and said: “I’m really scared. I think people are gonna die.” Katherine, who is using her middle name for her protection, told Kavanaugh that she thought transgender youth may be the target of violence due to the hate generated by Donald Trump’s recent action.

On 28 January, Trump issued an executive order to ban access to gender-affirming care for youth under 19 years old. It directed federal agencies to deny funding to institutions that offer gender-affirming medical care including hormones and puberty blockers.

“She just felt like the world was crumbling around her. So we talked it out and tried to stay super positive,” said Kavanaugh, a parent of two trans children. “I think she really feels like we’re on the edge of chaos.”

In a victory for trans kids and their families, a federal judge in Maryland blocked the ban on 4 March. The preliminary injunction extended a mid-February restraining order that blocked Trump’s directive and will remain in effect until further order from the US district court for the district of Maryland. In the meantime, the order prohibits the government from withholding federal funding to healthcare facilities that provide treatment to trans youth.

Still, the executive order sent parents, children and medical providers into a tailspin as they deciphered its impacts. Some hospitals immediately cancelled appointments and turned away new patients to adhere to the directive..

Some parents say that their children’s mental health severely declined in the weeks following the executive order. And as a result, families have gone to great lengths to ensure that their trans kids continue to receive care, including considering moving abroad or stocking up on puberty suppressants.

“We have seen dozens of families affected across the United States, in many, many states that have been left and abandoned without care that they need,” said Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and healthcare strategist at the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal. “This is an unlawful executive order because it seeks to override the congressional mandate to condition federal financial assistance on non-discrimination, and this order seeks to require discrimination as a condition of federal funding.”

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Source: The Guardian, 12 March 2025

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Mental health charities struggling to cope with GP-referral influx

Mental health charities in England are struggling to cope with the number of sick patients referred to them by GPs, with under-qualified professionals increasingly tasked with treating the seriously ill.

Experts told the Guardian that some desperate GPs were “signposting” patients to services not always equipped to deal with them.

These are provided by unregulated charities, which employ practitioners who are not always transparent about their qualifications or level of competence.

Some charities reported struggling to cope with demand, with their staff, who do not need the specific qualifications required by the NHS, finding themselves tasked with helping the sickest patients.

“The issue is that people are desperate,” said Jaime Craig, who will be appointed chair of the Association of Clinical Psychologists in May. “There’s very limited access to services, and so people go to the GP and they say: ‘Well, I’ve had a flyer from this person who’s offering counselling, why don’t you try them?’

“To be fair to GPs, sometimes their local areas don’t have an awful lot to offer in terms of mental health support and they are struggling with the amount of people coming in for psychological or counselling support.

“But there’s a big problem because the patient can’t know whether what is being suggested on a leaflet or a website is OK unless someone does some vetting.”

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Source: The Guardian, 12 March 2025

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Ten died of cancer after NHS blunder in England meant they were not invited for screening

Ten people have died from cancer and up to 10 more have been diagnosed with the disease after a blunder meant they were not invited to NHS screening programmes.

Health officials failed to invite more than 5,000 patients in total for routine checks after an IT error affected bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening programmes, as well as abdominal aortic aneurysm screening.

In a written ministerial statement on Tuesday, health minister Ashley Dalton said that NHS England had written to those affected this week.

The letters were sent to patients who are still eligible for a screening programme, or who were previously eligible for a programme but now exceed its upper age limit. NHS England has also set up a helpline.

The mistake occurred when the GP registration process of the patients was “not completed correctly, meaning their details were not passed to NHS screening system”, Dalton said.

“Records indicate that up to 10 patients have been diagnosed with a relevant cancer and were not invited for certain screening,” she added.

“The impact on these patients is not yet known and a clinical harm assessment process will be undertaken, based on expert clinical advice.

“It is with deep sadness that I must report that records also indicate that around 10 people who were not invited for screening may have died from a relevant cancer.”

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Source: The Guardian, 11 March 2025

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MS patients in England to benefit from major roll out of take-at-home pill

Thousands of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) in England are to become the first in Europe to benefit from a major roll out of an immunotherapy pill.

Current treatments involve regular trips to hospital, drug infusions, frequent injections and extensive monitoring, which add to the burden on patients and healthcare systems.

The new tablet, cladribine, can be swallowed at home, and needs to be taken only 20 times in the first two years of a four-year cycle. The regime consists of a maximum of 10 days of treatment in the first year and 10 days in the second; no additional treatment is needed in the next two years.

Patients thinking about having children can also safely conceive in the third and fourth years of the treatment cycle. This is an important development, as MS is most commonly diagnosed in women in their 20s and 30s.

The NHS in England is the first healthcare system in Europe to widely introduce the drug to patients with active relapsing-remitting MS after it received the go-ahead from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

As well as benefits for the patient, the rollout is expected to save thousands of clinical hours each year, freeing up NHS capacity by reducing the need for hospital appointments and time consuming treatments.

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Source: The Guardian, 12 March 2025

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Prescriptions for ADHD drugs jump 18% year-on-year, figures show

Prescriptions for drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have jumped 18% year-on-year since the pandemic, research suggests.

Experts said increasing awareness of ADHD, including via social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, is likely to have encouraged more people to seek diagnosis and treatment for the condition.

However, they warned that “misinformation on these platforms may lead to misconceptions about symptoms, diagnosis and treatment”.

Another reason behind the rise could be the “strong association between the impact of the (Covid) pandemic and the worsening of ADHD symptoms”, they said.

Dr Ulrich Muller-Sedgwick, ADHD champion at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said people with ADHD need access to timely and effective assessment, “followed by the appropriate treatment”.

He added: “We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of people coming forward for ADHD support in recent years.

“There are many reasons for this, including improved recognition of ADHD in women, greater public awareness and the impacts of the pandemic which exacerbated many people’s symptoms.

“The right diagnosis and care, including medication and reasonable adjustments, can greatly benefit people’s health and support them to reach their full potential at school, university or work.

“We know that expanding ADHD services through targeted investment would help ensure people receive the vital care they need.”

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Source: The Independent, 11 March 2025

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Surgeon with ‘complete freedom’ harmed dozens of patients

An orthopaedic surgeon with “almost complete clinical freedom” is likely to have harmed nearly 100 patients, a long-running investigation has found.

The review examined 382 elective complex upper limb procedures at Walsall Healthcare Trust in the West Midlands. It found treatment was “sufficiently sub-optimal to have caused moderate or serious harm” in 24% of cases.

As well as the surgeon who carried out the procedures being “apparently not fully competent to perform” them, there was a lack of robust oversight and poor coding, and notes which made it difficult to establish what had happened.

The cases studied involved “procedures of concern”, meaning the rate of harm among other all patients operated on by the surgeon is likely to be lower.

Surgeon Mian Munawar Shah was stopped from carrying out some operations after concerns were raised about his work in 2020 and was later suspended from patient-facing work. He also worked at a nearby private hospital, Spire Little Aston, but work there is not covered by the reviews published today.

After two external reviews, the trust decided to notify and recall patients who had undergone complex upper limb surgery done by him. Some hand and wrist surgery was also examined and found to involve poor or very poor care, including cases where the wrong bone was removed.

The final reviews were completed in September, and findings have been published by the Trust.

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Source: HSJ, 11 March 2025

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USAid cuts could create untreatable TB bug ‘resistant to everything we have’

Dangerous new forms of tuberculosis (TB) for which there is no treatment could emerge as a result of US aid cuts, a top doctor has warned.

Dr Lucica Ditiu, who heads the Stop TB Partnership, said she feared that interruptions to people’s treatment would allow the airborne bug to mutate into a new, untreatable form.

Moreover, a lack of diagnostic services, which have also been badly affected by the Trump administration’s aid cuts, would allow TB to spread more easily, she said.

Programmes working to detect, treat and research new ways to fight TB are among nearly 10,000 health projects worldwide that received notices at the end of February that the US was terminating their funding after a review of aid spending.

The US has historically provided between $200m (£155m) and $250m a year in bilateral funding to poorer countries for their work on TB, the World Health Organization said last week, warning that “abrupt funding cuts” would “cripple TB prevention and treatment efforts, reverse decades of progress, and endanger millions of lives”.

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Source: The Independent, 10 March 2025

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Doctors didn't warn women of 'risky sex' drug urges

Patients prescribed drugs for movement disorders - including restless leg syndrome (RLS) - say doctors did not warn them about serious side effects that led them to seek out risky sexual behaviour.

Twenty women have told the BBC that the drugs - given to them for RLS, which causes an irresistible urge to move - ruined their lives.

A report by drugs firm GSK - seen by the BBC - shows it learned in 2003 of a link between the medicines, known as dopamine agonist drugs, and what it described as "deviant" sexual behaviour. It cited a case of a man who had sexually assaulted a child while taking the drug for Parkinson's.

While there is no explicit reference to this side effect in patient leaflets, the UK medicines regulator told us there was a general warning, external about increased libido and harmful behaviour. GSK says a risk of "altered" sexual interest is also referred to in the leaflets.

Some of the women who described being drawn to risky sexual behaviour told us they had no idea of what was causing it. Others said they felt compelled to gamble or shop with no history of such activities. One accumulated debts of more than £150,000.

In a statement, GSK told the BBC Ropinirole had been prescribed for more than 17 million treatments and undergone "extensive clinical trials". It added the drug had proven to be effective and had a "well-characterised safety profile".

"As with all medicines, [it] has potential side effects and these are clearly stated in the prescribing information," it said.

The UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), said that while a specific reference to "deviant" sexual behaviour is not included in warnings, such impulses vary and a general warning about activities which may be harmful is included.

It also said that it is important for healthcare professionals to explain the possible risk to patients and not all experience these types of side effects.

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Source: BBC News, 11 March 2025

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US CDC plans study into vaccines and autism, sources say

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning a large study into potential connections between vaccines and autism, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, despite extensive scientific research that has disproven or failed to find evidence of such links.

The CDC's move comes amid one of the largest measles outbreaks the U.S. has seen in the past decade, with more than 200 cases and two deaths in Texas and New Mexico. The outbreak has been fueled by declining vaccination rates in parts of the United States where parents have been falsely persuaded that such shots do more harm than good.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whose role includes authority over the CDC, has long sowed doubt over the safety of the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). In a cabinet meeting last week, Kennedy initially downplayed news that a school-aged child had died of measles in Texas, the first such death in a decade, calling such outbreaks ordinary and failing to mention the role of vaccination to prevent measles.

Last weekend Kennedy published an opinion piece on Fox News that promoted the role of vaccination, but also told parents vaccination was a personal choice and urged them to consult with their physician.

HHS and CDC cited what they described as skyrocketing autism rates in a joint statement on Friday.

"CDC will leave no stone unturned in its mission to figure out what exactly is happening," the statement said. "The American people expect high quality research and transparency and that is what CDC is delivering."

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Source: Reuters, 7 March 2025

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NHS England to cut workforce by half as Streeting restructures

NHS England will lose half its staff and a huge swathe of its senior management team as part of a brutal restructuring under its new boss.

Its workforce will shrink from 13,000 to about 6,500 as entire teams are axed to save money and avoid “duplication” with officials at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).

NHS England staff said they were “in shock and awe” at the scale of the job cuts, which go far beyond the loss of 2,000 posts to save £175m announced just weeks ago.

The DHSC will also become smaller as a result of a process that will see it working much more closely from April with NHS England, though it will shed far fewer staff than the latter. The changes will give Wes Streeting, the health secretary, far more control over the organisation that is responsible for the operational performance of the health service in England.

“These changes represent the biggest reshaping of the NHS’s national architecture in more than a decade,” said Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts in England.

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Source: The Guardian, 10 March 2025

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Drug shortages putting patients at risk, pharmacists warn

Patients are being put at risk of serious illness as pharmacists are unable to dispense vital medications due to drug shortages, industry leaders have warned.

At least once a day drug supply problems mean pharmacies are unable to dispense a prescription, according to a survey of 500 pharmacies by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).

Currently if a prescription is out of stock, patients need to go back to their GP to get an alternative medication. But this can delay care and increase the risk of serious illness.

That’s because the pharmacist is not permitted to make a substitution even if they have a safe alternative in stock, this is except in very limited circumstances where a Serious Shortage Protocol has been issued by the NHS.

The NPA, which represents 6,000 independent community pharmacies, is calling on the government to grant greater flexibility for pharmacists to substitute medication or strength of a drug when it is safe to do so.

The NPA says it is “madness” to send someone back to the GP and warned the current situation poses a risk to patient safety. It said it could lead to patients potentially going without vital medication, such as some types of antibiotics, presenting a serious risk to their health.

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Source: The Independent, 10 March 2025

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Nearly one in five UK care workers feel unsafe while on shift, survey finds

Nearly one in five UK care workers feel unsafe while on shift, according to a new survey highlighting the array of pressures facing the frontline workforce.

The stark finding comes as part of a global survey published on the fifth anniversary of Covid being declared a global pandemic, amid warnings from the World Health Organization of a looming shortage of 11 million healthcare workers by 2030.

In the report from Uni Global Union, which surveyed more than 11,000 health and social care workers from 63 nations, with 2,132 in the UK including doctors, more than a third reported experiencing or witnessing violence or harassment at work at least monthly.

And in what the union described as a global staffing crisis, less than half of those surveyed worldwide believed their career to be sustainable until retirement age.

In the UK, where more than 700 care workers were polled, two-thirds said they were frequently too short-staffed to provide a high quality of care to patients, defined in the survey as “when the number of staff is too low compared to the needs of patients”. This included 33% who said this was “always” the case, while just 8% said they were “never” or “rarely” short-staffed.

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Source: The Independent, 10 March 2025

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Virtual ward cost similar to inpatient care, says contentious study’s author

The cost of discharging patients to virtual wards becomes “equitable” with inpatient care over time, analysis suggests – despite initial findings that it was much more expensive.

A research project conducted at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals in 2022 published its results last year, which found the cost of avoiding a bed day in hospital by discharging a patient to a virtual ward was £935 per day, compared to an average cost of £536 per day for keeping a patient in a general inpatient hospital bed.

But, the study’s lead author has now told HSJ that, following a second year of monitoring, the cost of step-down virtual ward care had decreased to be roughly the same as traditional inpatient care.

The initial study sparked significant debate, and was met with criticism from NHS England, which said the results were “misleading”, particularly due to its limited scope and time frame. 

Having evaluated WWL’s virtual ward provision again in 2023, Martin Farrier, director of digital medicine at WWL and lead author of the original paper, said the cost of step-down virtual ward care was “still significant” but now “equitable” with keeping a patient in a hospital bed.

Dr Farrier said the majority of the cost per patient was from staffing, and this had fallen significantly in year two.

He said: “In the first year, [staff] said they were flat out, but they weren’t flat out, they were just getting used to their system. They sped up with time, [so] the capacity of the system becomes much larger… [There’s] a mixture of things going on. But what you then get… is the costs come down and they become equitable with the cost of hospital care.”

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Source: HSJ, 10 March 2025

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Grieving dad says NHS not learning from mistakes

A dad whose son died following a series of hospital errors has warned the NHS is still failing to learn from its mistakes after an increase in serious patient safety incidents.

Fraser Morton's baby son, Lucas, was one of six "unnecessary" baby deaths at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock nearly a decade ago.

The scandal sparked a shake-up of how safety incidents are reviewed but concerns have been raised about the quality and effectiveness of these investigations.

More than 800 safety incidents were reported in the NHS last year - a 41% increase from 2020 - and health watchdogs are now revamping the reporting system to improve scrutiny.

The rise in reported Significant Adverse Event Reviews (SAERs), which include avoidable deaths, comes as the NHS has faced unprecedented pressure since the Covid pandemic.

Mr Morton said he'd seen little of the promised changes, such as the appointment of an independent patient safety commissioner, since the death of his son in 2015.

He said: "In 2016, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said Scotland's healthcare system was marking their own homework when it came to reviews and investigations and we've not made any progress since then.

Mr Morton's son Lucas died after a series of failings, including not properly monitoring his heartbeat during childbirth, but the death was not investigated as an SAER.

Only after pressure from the family and a BBC investigation was a fuller review launched with NHS Ayrshire and Arran then admitting Lucas's death was "unnecessary" and issuing the family an "unreserved apology".

Mr Morton added: "It is the lack of independent scrutiny that concerns me.

"Mistakes will always happen, but the NHS is the only high- risk, high-consequence organisation or sector that doesn't have an external regulator, a truly independent regulator you [can] compare to say the rail, airline or nuclear industry."

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Source: BBC News, 7 March 2025

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Doctors who treat trans patients say threats worsened after Trump’s orders

Panic buttons, security cameras and active-shooter drills: Those are some of the ways doctors who treat transgender children have armed themselves when facing violent threats over the years. Now, they’re warning the president’s actions could make things more dangerous.

Even before President Donald Trump attempted to ban gender transition care nationwide for young people, protesters routinely demonstrated outside clinics that treat trans youths. Some carried signs with violent messages and the names of doctors who treat trans children. One entered a Seattle clinic with a weapon, according to court records.

Now doctors say threats of violence are rising — along with fears of legal action — in the wake of Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order that labeled gender transition care for minors a “dangerous trend” and “a stain on our Nation’s history.” Dozens of providers gave sworn affidavits as part of a lawsuit four states filed challenging the legality of Trump’s executive order.

Providers in those Democratic-led states remain so afraid, many agreed to file affidavits challenging the order only if they could do so anonymously. Washington’s state attorney general led the legal effort.

“I am scared, not just for myself, but for my family,” one Seattle-based physician and professor wrote in court documents. “It is a terrifying time to be a doctor providing gender-affirming care.”

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Source: Washington Post, 9 March 2025

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Republican Medicaid cuts could shutter rural hospitals, maternity care

Rural hospitals across the United States fear massive Medicaid cuts favored by the Republican Party could decimate maternity services or shutter already struggling medical facilities in communities that overwhelmingly voted for Donald Trump.

Nearly half of all rural hospitals nationwide operate at a deficit, with Medicaid barely keeping them afloat. Already, almost 200 rural hospitals have closed in the past two decades, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, part of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Rural hospital leaders in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas who spoke to The Washington Post warned that the enormous cuts congressional Republicans are weighing could further destroy limited health-care access in rural America. Proposals to slash up to $880 billion over 10 years — which is expected to be accomplished largely by scaling back on Medicaid — would also impact those who do not rely on the programme but do rely on the medical facilities that are financially dependent on the programme’s reimbursements.

Heart attack and stroke victims may lose crucial time being ferried by ambulance to big-city hospitals, healthcare experts say. Rural nursing homes may vanish, straining families in the poorest of regions. Those who are pregnant may have no choice but to drive long distances for prenatal checkups and to give birth.

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Source: Washington Post, 9 March 2025

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Cancer tests and virtual wards targeted for new cuts

Recently-opened cancer testing centres and virtual wards will be among the services cut back as the NHS seeks to eliminate a £6.6bn forecast deficit, senior leaders have told HSJ.

Plans also include restricting treatments, extending waiting times, de-funding the third sector, and significant job cuts for clinicians as well as managers.

HSJ asked NHS trust and commissioner CEOs and finance directors across the country what actions would be required in their organisation, after NHSE last week demanded they “get a grip” of deficits and “accelerate” decisions.

Cost-cutting measures being proposed or considered locally include:

  • Closing community diagnostic centres (CDCs), and cancelling plans for more CDCs. 
  • Closing or reducing the size of virtual wards, whose expansion since Covid-19 has been repeatedly declared as one of the most significant reforms to shift care out of hospital.
  • Cuts to schemes to carry out more elective work, including reducing out-of-hours “waiting list initiative” sessions and cancelling planned “elective hubs”. 
  • Cutting staff numbers, most often corporate and non-clinical, but in some areas extending to reductions to clinical staff.
  • Extending waiting times for planned operations and treatment, especially for procedures which currently have short waits, such as ophthalmology, which are often provided by the private sector. One CEO said it required “rationing of care” in these areas. There will be further delays and limiting of patients’ “right to choose” to use private services which diagnose autism and ADHD.

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Source: HSJ, 10 March 2025

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Speedy finger-prick tests to diagnose strokes trialled in Cambridgeshire

Ambulance crews in Cambridgeshire are piloting the use of finger-prick blood tests to diagnose the deadliest form of stroke, with preliminary data suggesting they may be up to twice as effective as relying on patients’ symptoms alone.

The tests, which work on a similar principle to the lateral flow tests (LFTs) used to detect Covid, are designed to rapidly identify whether someone suspected of having a stroke has suffered a large vessel occlusion (LVO), where a blood clot blocks a major artery in the brain.

Although LVOs account for about a third of strokes, they are responsible for 95% of disabilities and deaths. However, a patient’s chances of recovery are markedly improved if they undergo a thrombectomy procedure to manually remove the clot within hours of symptom onset.

The problem is that there are only 24 hospitals in the UK that can provide thrombectomy treatment, and LVO is difficult to diagnose without a brain scan because many other conditions show similar symptoms.

Unless a patient is lucky enough to live near a specialist centre, they will usually be assessed at a general hospital and then transferred. According to national audit data from 2022-23, it takes an average of three hours or more from arriving at a first hospital to arriving at a thrombectomy centre.

“Early identification of LVO strokes by ambulance clinicians could offer opportunities for fast-tracking patients to thrombectomy-capable hospitals, avoiding delays to care when taken to other non-specialist hospitals,” said Larissa Prothero, an advanced research paramedic at the East of England ambulance service NHS trust (EEAST), which is involved in the feasibility study.

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Source: The Guardian, 9 March 2025

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Inside the fight to improve outcomes for Black cancer sufferers

Getting tested for prostate cancer should’ve been easy for Paul Campbell. He wanted a check-up after seeing an advert on TV calling for men in their 40s to get thorough health checks.

He asked his GP but was immediately questioned about why he – a man who seemed otherwise healthy – would want a check-up.

“I had to fight my ground, I had to raise my voice. And eventually, I got the test,” Mr Campbell told The Independent. He was later diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.

“Had I not been assertive and pushy, by the time I found out, it would have been stage 4.”

Mr Campbell is far from being alone in his experience. New research from the NHS Race and Health Observatory found “alarming levels” of discrimination towards patients from ethnic minorities and huge levels of mistrust in the NHS system.

The survey of 2,680 people found only 55% trusted primary care to meet their health needs most or all of the time, while a third of south Asian participants said they either rarely or never trusted primary care to meet their health needs.

On Friday, the NHS Race and Health Observatory roundtable brought together 20 key partners from local communities, the volunteer sector, the government and broader NHS to discuss the findings.

Professor Habib Naqvi, chief executive, NHS Race and Health Observatory, said: “We cannot have a two-tier NHS based upon patient ethnicity, background or circumstances. This report reflects the clear need to bring speed and urgency to reform the NHS, so that patients do not face discrimination and systemic barriers when seeking healthcare.”

These issues have a real impact on health outcomes.

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Source: The Independent, 9 March 2025

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Software bug at firm left NHS data 'vulnerable to hackers'

The NHS is "looking into" allegations that patient data was left vulnerable to hacking due to a software flaw at a private medical services company.

The flaw was found last November at Medefer, which handles 1,500 NHS patient referrals a month.

The software engineer who discovered the flaw believes the problem had existed for at least six years.

Medefer says there is no evidence the flaw had been in place that long and stressed that patient data has not been compromised.

The flaw was fixed a few days after being discovered.

In late February the company commissioned an external security agency to undertake a review of its data management systems.

An NHS spokesperson said: "We are looking into the concerns raised about Medefer and will take further action if appropriate."

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Source: BBC News, 10 March 2025

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Loved ones remembered on fifth anniversary of start of Covid

Former Children's Laureate Michael Rosen said that "a shadow passed over us" and recited a moving poem of Covid pandemic memories to mark the fifth anniversary since the outbreak of the deadly virus.

Emotional scenes played out across the UK on Sunday as the bereaved and their communities hosted hundreds of events to mark the fifth anniversary of the start of the pandemic in a day of reflection.

Rosen, 78, was rushed to hospital with Covid and put into an induced coma in intensive care in March 2020.

Speaking at a memorial event in Staffordshire, the poet said "thanks to the expertise and care I received, I came through, but I look back over my shoulder and think of those who didn't".

The annual day is one of the recommendations set out by the UK Commission on Covid Commemoration, external.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: "As we mark five years since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, I know for many there is deep grief and loss that may never be relieved."

In London, sobbing could be heard as bereaved relatives, led by a Highland piper, joined well wishers to walk beside the National Covid Memorial Wall.

They passed 3,000 photographs of the faces of some of those who died, which represents just over 1% of the total death toll from Covid in the UK, organisers said.

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Source: BBC News, 8 March 2025

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Patients with Long Covid regain sense of smell and taste with pioneering surgery

Doctors in London have successfully restored a sense of smell and taste in patients who lost it due to long Covid with pioneering surgery that expands their nasal airways to kickstart their recovery.

Most patients diagnosed with Covid-19 recover fully. But the infectious disease can lead to serious long-term effects. About six in every 100 people who get Covid develop Long Covid, with millions of people affected globally, according to the World Health Organization.

Losing a sense of smell and taste are among more than 200 different symptoms reported by people with Long Covid.

Now surgeons at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH) have cured a dozen patients, each of whom had suffered a profound loss of smell after a Covid infection. All had experienced the problem for more than two years and other treatments, such as smell training and corticosteroids, had failed.

In a study aiming to find new ways to resolve the issue, surgeons tried a technique called functional septorhinoplasty (fSRP), which is typically used to correct any deviation of the nasal septum, increasing the size of nasal passageways.

This boosts airflow into the olfactory region, at the roof of the nasal cavity, which controls smell. Doctors said the surgery enabled an increased amount of odorants – chemical compounds that have a smell – to reach the roof of the nose, where sense of smell is located.

They believe that increasing the delivery of odorants to this area “kickstarts” smell recovery in patients who have lost their sense of smell to Long Covid.

Prof Peter Andrews, a senior consultant surgeon in rhinology and facial plastic surgery who led the research, said surgery increased the airway by about 30%, so airflow also increased by about 30%.

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Source: The Guardian, 7 March 2025

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Inquiry into claims Nottingham victim records were accessed

A hospital trust is investigating reports staff may have "inappropriately" accessed the medical records of the three people killed in the Nottingham attacks.

Barnaby Webber and Grace O'Malley-Kumar, both 19, and Ian Coates, 65, were stabbed to death by Valdo Calocane in the city in June 2023.

Dr Manjeet Shehmar, medical director at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, said the trust was investigating "concerns that members of staff may have inappropriately accessed the medical records" of the three victims.

She said the families had been informed of the investigation and would be updated.

"The families of Ian, Grace, and Barnaby have already had to endure much pain and heartache and I'm truly sorry that this will add further to their suffering," Dr Shehmar said.

"Through our investigation, we will find out what happened and will not hesitate to take action as necessary."

The claims of the medical records being accessed inappropriately were first reported by the Daily Mirror, external.

The newspaper quoted the victims' families as saying the alleged actions were "sickening" and "not just alleged data breaches but gross invasions of privacy and civil liberty".

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Source: BBC News, 6 March 2025

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Ministers delaying inquiry into treatment of migrant carers, RCN says

Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees.

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

Despite the government’s promises to clamp down on abusive practices by rogue employers and agencies, the RCN says it continues to receive more than 100 calls a year from nurses who say they are being mistreated.

Ranger said in her letter: “The RCN is deeply concerned by reports of exploitative workplace practices that many international educated nursing staff in the care sector face. Our members report a range of issues from long working hours, excessive repayment fees to exit contracts, substandard and crowded accommodation, and illegal work finding fees.”

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Source: The Guardian, 7 March 2025

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Worst trusts for food, cleanliness and privacy revealed

The best and worst trusts for food, cleanliness and privacy – as judged by patients and staff – have been revealed.

Whittington Health Trust has been named among the worst five acute trusts on all the above measures, in the latest national assessment of care environments.

Leeds and York Partnership Foundation Trust was the only mental health trust in the bottom five on all these counts. 

NHS England published the results of a patient-led assessment of the care environment (PLACE) last month. A team of patients and staff judged the scores on non-clinical aspects of the trust environment.

A Whittington Health spokesman said it had a wide-ranging plan for improvements, including refurbishments and enhanced catering. 

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Source: HSJ, 6 March 2025

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