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Britain's postcode lottery for newborn deaths: Mortality rates on NHS wards twice as high in some areas, reveals report

Sick newborns in some areas of the UK are dying at twice the rate of seriously ill babies in other areas, a new report has revealed.

The findings raise serious questions about the quality of care in some neonatal units, with experts warning action needs to be taken to tackle the “striking variation”.

Across the country neonatal units are also short of at least 600 nurses with four in five failing to meet required safe staffing levels for specialist nurses.

The regions with the highest mortality rate at 10 per cent were Staffordshire, Shropshire and the Black Country, where 107 babies died. This compared with a rate of 5 per cent in north central and northeast London. The Shropshire region includes the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust, which is at the centre of the largest maternity scandal in the history of the NHS, with hundreds of alleged cases of poor care now under investigation.

Dr Sam Oddie, a consultant neonatologist at Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust and who led the work for the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the differences in death rates between units.

“The mortality differences are very striking, with some units having a mortality rate twice that of the lowest. This variation in mortality is a basis for action by neonatal networks to ensure they are doing everything they can to make sure their mortality is as low as possible,” he said.

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Source: The Independent, 18 December 2019

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NHSE desire to please government forcing finance chiefs to agree undeliverable plans

One of the NHS’s foremost finance figures has joined the chorus of senior healthcare leaders raising serious concerns about the damaging effect of the way the service’s annual planning round is conducted. 

Hardev Virdee is the group finance officer of Barts Health Trust, the junior vice president of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, and the chair of the NHS National Finance Academy.

In an interview with HSJ, he said:

  • The planning process was undermining the credibility of both the financial plans it produced and the senior NHS finance staff involved.
  • This “erosion of credibility” had grown over the last five years.
  • NHS England’s main goal was to produce financial plans that were acceptable to government, rather than being sustainable or credible.
  • The process means finance directors and boards are increasingly having to “consider unethical options”.
  • The pressure felt by many senior NHS finance professionals is seriously affecting their morale, causing some to leave the sector, and discouraging others from taking on the most senior and toughest jobs.

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Source: HSJ, 4 November 2024

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Families who had babies switched at birth in 1967 in line for NHS compensation

Families of two babies reportedly switched at birth in an NHS hospital in 1967 are now in line for compensation in the first case of its kind.

The baby girls, now grown women named in reports only as Claire and Jessica, were switched at an NHS West Midlands hospital shortly after birth but their families only discovered the mistake 55 years later, according to the BBC.

The truth was discovered only after the brother of one of the women, took a DNA test in 2021, which listed another woman as his full sibling.

He contacted the woman and it was quickly realised she had been another baby girl born at the same hospital around the same time.

It is extremely rare for incidents of babies being switched at birth to occur. A freedom of information request in 2017 revealed there had been no recorded cases of babies being sent home with the wrong family.

Since the 1980s, newborns have been given radio frequency identification (RFID) tags immediately after their birth, which allow their location to be tracked.

NHS Resolution, which deals with complaints against the NHS, told the BBC the switch was an “appalling error” and that it had accepted legal liability.

It told the BBC that it was a “unique and complex case” and that it was still working to agree on the amount of compensation that was due.

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Source: The Independent, 4 November 2024

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ADHD drug shortage 'nightmare' for Kent families

Some people in Kent with ADHD say a shortage of vital medications is making life a "living nightmare".

The lack of medications at pharmacies has even left some people waiting years to get the drugs prescribed for them.

Some said they regularly have to ring dozens of pharmacies before finding their medication or drive up to 20 miles (32km) to collect treatments, while one person has resorted to paying £200 a month to get hers privately.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said that, while the majority of medicines were in good supply, it is working to resolve issues caused by complex and highly regulated global supply chains.

Single mother Tracy McKenzie has ADHD, along with her 10-year-old daughter and teenage son.

"My son is on a high strength of stimulant medication and without it becomes impulsive and aggressive," said Ms McKenzie, from Dartford.

"Every month I worry about trying to get medication for us all, which then impacts my own mental health.

"I phone many chemists within a 20-mile radius to find which has it in stock and pray that, by the time the doctor writes the prescription, someone else hasn't managed to get the last of it before me.

"It's a living nightmare."

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Source: BBC News, 4 November 2024

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Austerity increased rates of premature births in UK, research says

Austerity measures, originally introduced by the coalition government in 2010, led to a dramatic increase in premature births and low-weight births, a new study has shown.

Birth rates in Scotland found “marked increases” in babies born smaller or prematurely were particularly evident in the most deprived areas, according to the researchers.

The study, published in the European Journal of Medicine, showed trends in low birth rates and premature birth changes within one to three years after austerity was implemented. Premature birth was the main driver of smaller weights.

For babies born in the 20 per cent most deprived areas premature birth rates increased by around 25 per cent, after declining year on year prior 2012.

Researchers said: “Hugely concerning changes to health outcomes have been observed in the UK since the early 2010s, including reductions in life expectancy and widening of inequalities. These have been attributed to UK government ‘austerity’ policies which have profoundly affected poorer populations.”

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Source: The Independent, 3 November 2024

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A quarter of paediatric deaths at hospitals are preventable, study finds

Investing in paediatric emergency care could save lives more than 2,100 lives each year, new research found.

The study also reported that a quarter of childhood deaths are preventable and investing in the care could save more children.

The price of such an investment would be modest, ranging from no cost to $11.84 per child, according to Oregon Health & Science University physicians.

Implementing new standards of paediatric care across hospital may have prevented an estimated 2,143 of the 7,619 paediatric deaths that occur in emergency departments or following admission from emergency departments each year, the study noted.

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Source: The Independent, 2 November 2024

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Revealed: the ongoing impact of delays to ‘new hospital’ schemes

Infrastructure failings have led to over 1,000 operations being cancelled in the past two years at just 14 trusts whose rebuilding plans have been placed under review by the new government, HSJ can reveal.

Ceiling leaks, flooding, broken ventilation systems, pest infestations and many other issues have caused the disruption. 

HSJ has tracked cancelled operations caused by infrastructure incidents across trusts in the 40 "new hospitals" programme since 2019, the year the plan was first announced by former health secretary Matt Hancock. The programme has been plagued by delays and rising costs ever since. 

Many schemes remain in limbo five years on and are facing the threat of even more delays after Labour announced it was reviewing the programme and planned to come up with a new "realistic" delivery timetable. Health secretary Wes Streeting has promised to reveal the outcome “in the coming weeks”. 

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Source: HSJ, 1 November 2024

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‘NHS left my daughter alone in A&E for seven hours having seizures’

Asenior midwife has said she is “disgusted” at the NHS care her daughter received and that she was forced to step in and tend to other patients herself during recent visits to an A&E department.

Donna Ockenden, who has led government-commissioned reviews into patient safety, said Phoebe, her 20-year-old daughter who has epilepsy, was “failed” by A&E staff at one department.

She said her daughter, who has learning disabilities, was left in a waiting room by staff for seven hours while still having seizures after she was transferred to hospital in an ambulance.

She said: “It was Phoebe’s third attendance in A&E in the last weeks. During the first two [visits] I was with her and I was her advocate. It was still pretty rubbish … but for the third I was in Dubai on holiday and woke up to messages about Phoebe being in A&E.

“Despite her learning disabilities and being known to the service she was dropped off in the waiting room on her own. She is 20 but she is really vulnerable, and was left in a chair for seven hours, still having some seizures.

“Initially she was left in the waiting area on her own. It’s just unspeakable, it’s absolutely disgusting and disgraceful.”

Ockenden, who led inquiries into NHS maternity scandals at Shrewsbury and Nottingham hospital trusts, said her daughter was only “just about kept safe” during her first two A&E visits because she was with her.

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Source: The Times, 31 October 2024

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Parents are putting more trust into ChatGPT than actual doctors, study finds

Parents are trusting ChatGPT for medical advice over actual doctors and nurses, a new study found.

Researchers at the University of Kansas also found that parents also say AI-generated text is credible, trustworthy and moral.

“When we began this research, it was right after ChatGPT first launched — we had concerns about how parents would use this new, easy method to gather health information for their children,” lead author and doctoral student Calissa Leslie-Miller said in a release. “Parents often turn to the internet for advice, so we wanted to understand what using ChatGPT would look like and what we should be worried about.”

Participants in the study were given health-related text, reviewing content generated by healthcare professionals and the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT. They were not told who, or what, authored the texts. They were asked to rate the texts based on five criteria - perceived morality, trustworthiness, expertise, accuracy and how likely they would be to rely on the information.

In many cases, parents couldn’t tell which content was generated by ChatGPT or by the experts. When there were significant differences in ratings, ChatGPT was rated to be more trustworthy, accurate and reliable than the expert-generated content.

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Source: The Independent, 30 October 2024

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NHS sends vulnerable adults to private hospital accused of abuse

Vulnerable adult patients have been sent by the NHS to a private hospital after it closed its children’s service just weeks ago following abuse allegations, The Independent can reveal.

Joyce Parker Hospital in Coventry, run by private hospital giant Cygnet Health Care, was accused by Care Quality Commission of failing to protect child patients from physical abuse by staff, following an inspection this summer.

A letter leaked to The Independent revealed inspectors saw CCTV evidence of staff “dragging” children around while restrained.

Cygnet Health Care, on which the NHS spends hundreds of millions of pounds for mental health beds, closed its children’s service in September following the allegations.

Weeks later the service reopened as a service for male adults and The Independent can reveal local NHS commissioners have already placed patients in the hospital, despite the previous abuse allegations.

Deborah Coles, chief executive for charity INQUEST, which has represented families of patients who’ve died in care, said: “This recycling of services, despite damning criticisms, is a loophole that needs to close.”

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Source: The Independent, 31 October 2024

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Ian Paterson tells inquest women ‘didn’t need to know’ about unauthorised mastectomy

The jailed breast surgeon Ian Paterson has said he did not tell women if he was going to perform an unauthorised cleavage-sparing mastectomy on them because “it was frightening and they didn’t need to or want to know”.

Giving evidence for the first time at an inquest into the deaths of 62 of his former patients, Paterson said he considered a cleavage-sparing mastectomy to be an “adaptation of a standard operation” that did not require separate consent.

After previously refusing to give evidence in the hearings, Paterson spoke on Thursday at the inquest of Elaine Turbill, who died, aged 63, in 2017 when her cancer returned after undergoing a mastectomy carried out by Paterson in 2005.

The inquest heard that at a recall clinic in 2010, it was recorded that 20% of her breast tissue had been left behind after the operation.

Speaking via video link from prison, where he is serving a 20-year sentence for multiple counts of wounding linked to unnecessary operations he carried out on patients, Paterson said he did not explain the procedure in detail to his patients.

“Most ladies know what a mastectomy is. I never went into great detail, it scares them and I don’t think they hear it, they just hear the word cancer,” he said. “This lady [Turbill] would have been taken into a separate room with a breast care nurse and would have discussed things in more detail.”

He later said: “It was frightening and [patients] didn’t need to or want to know.”

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Source: The Guardian, 31 October 2024

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Alert over steep rise in handover delays

An ambulance trust is warning that delays handing patients over to hospitals have “significantly deteriorated” in the past two months, with one waiting nearly 20 hours.

West Midlands Ambulance Service University Foundation Trust said October was set to be its second worst month on record for hours lost to delays outside hospitals.

It said the delays were set to amount to 42,000 crew hours in October for the region, the equivalent of 130 vehicles each day. In August the figure fell to 20,000 hours but they have since surged towards a level seen in the worst months of the past two winters.

This has pushed average response times for category 2 calls – which include suspected heart attacks and strokes – to well over the 30-minute “interim” target, the trust said.

The trust said it had been trying to use an “immediate offload” protocol to speed up handovers – which is backed by NHS England where there are category 1 or 2 calls waiting – but only 43% of its 1,259 requests were accepted by the acute trust involved, in the first three weeks of October.

Every day at least one person had to wait more than eight hours to be offloaded; and one wait in Worcester reached 19h35m. 

Staff are raising concerns about getting food and drink for patients and themselves; working shifts of up to 17 hours; lost training opportunities; as well as difficulties providing care in the vehicles.

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Source: HSJ, 1 November 2024

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AI model predicts patients at most risk of complication during treatment for advanced kidney failure

Artificial intelligence experts and healthcare professionals in Portsmouth have come together to help prevent a common and painful complication in advanced kidney failure treatment.

A study led by the University of Portsmouth and Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust (PHUT) has developed an AI model to predict which patients are most at risk of their blood pressure dropping during dialysis; a condition known as intradialytic hypotension (IDH).

3 million people have Chronic Kidney Disease in the UK and 31,000 of these are on haemodialysis (Kidney Care UK), where their blood is circulated through a machine to clean it of toxins.

One of the most common complications for patients undergoing this treatment at home or in centres is IDH, which occurs when their blood pressure drops suddenly. It is associated with increased mortality and hospitalisations, and until now there has been no reliable way to predict if it will occur.

Pre-dialysis and real-time data were collected from 10 treatment centres over two decades (2000-2020), involving 3,944 patients. The team used data comprising a total of 73,323 sessions with 36,662 IDH events.

Using this information, they identified 33 variables to determine the most at-risk individuals. These were all observations that are routinely collected during clinical care, such as weight, temperature, age, blood pressure, medication and treatment details.

Project lead, Dr Shamsul Masum from the University’s School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, said: “This research highlights the value of using machine learning in healthcare, particularly in complex situations like haemodialysis. Predicting hypotension not only helps clinicians intervene early but also opens the door to personalised care.

"As we continue to develop and refine these models, the goal is to create a practical decision-support system that could enhance dialysis management, patient safety and quality of care.”

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Source: University of Portsmouth, 23 October 2024

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Patients' voices to be heard in new safety review

A hospital trust has appointed a family liaison team to help patients and their families when things go wrong with treatment.

The move by the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) is aimed at improving responses to patient safety incidents, by learning from their experiences.

A failure to deal properly with incidents of harm was highlighted by the Ockenden Report into maternity failings, but the Care Quality Commission praised SaTH for improvements in 2023, saying incidents were now "managed well".

The trust's director of nursing Hayley Flavell said: "We will continue to strive towards providing excellent care for the communities we serve."

The new members of staff will "prioritise and support the needs of patients and families" affected.

They will also help colleagues speak to patients and relatives in the right way, ensuring their experiences and concerns are acted on.

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Source: BBC News, 30 October 2024

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I had months of pain when MS drug was swapped for a cheaper one

When Jonelle Roback went into hospital for a monthly drug treatment infusion, she was shocked to find a piece of paper on her waiting room chair informing her that her medication was suddenly being switched.

Roback, 54, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in 2009, had been on the intravenous drug Tysabri for 13 years, which had enabled her to “live a normal life”.

But in May, as part of an NHS England drive to save money, Roback and other MS patients had their Tysabri medication changed to a “biosimilar” drug — a medicine that has been shown not to have any clinically meaningful differences from the originator drug — called Tyruko, which is cheaper.

This marked the start of a horrible ordeal, with Roback experiencing debilitating symptoms including headaches, nausea, fatigue and severe bloating.

She has since been in contact with dozens of other MS patients who have also experienced difficulties after having their medication switched, and they have expressed “urgent concerns” to the NHS about the failure to properly consult patients about their treatment.

A group of more than 30 patients, including Roback, have written to the NHS chief executive, Amanda Pritchard, and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, to raise concerns about the “forced treatment switch”.

The letter says that some patients had their drug changed without their knowledge, adding: “The lack of communication and transparency has led to serious side-effects, stress, loss of earnings, and other detrimental impacts on our lives. We have discovered that we are effectively being used as ‘guinea pigs’ for this new treatment.”

Roback said it is vital that patients are given an active voice in medication decisions, adding: “It is outrageous that there was no discussion or consultation about changing the medication, just a piece of paper left on a chair. There was nothing we could do about it."

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Source: The Times, 25 October 2024

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First case of new potentially deadly mpox strain Clade 1b detected in UK

The first UK case of a potentially deadly strain of the mpox virus has been detected in London.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said the risk to the UK population from the clade 1b mpox strain “remains low”.

The person involved had been on holiday in Africa and travelled back to the UK on an overnight flight on 21 October.

They developed flu-like symptoms more than 24 hours later and, on 24 October, started to develop a rash which worsened in the following days.

The person attended an emergency department in London on 27 October, where they were swabbed, tested and sent home to isolate while waiting for the results.

Fewer than 10 people who are thought to have come into contact with the patient are initially being traced, the UKHSA said. These are household contacts, although the UKHSA is “still working” on the number of people it may have to contact trace.

Professor Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at UKHSA, said: “It is thanks to our surveillance that we have been able to detect this virus. This is the first time we have detected this clade of mpox in the UK, though other cases have been confirmed abroad.

“The risk to the UK population remains low, and we are working rapidly to trace close contacts and reduce the risk of any potential spread. In accordance with established protocols, investigations are underway to learn how the individual acquired the infection and to assess whether there are any further associated cases.”

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Source: The Independent, 31 October 2024

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Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England

The NHS in England is to receive a £22.6bn cash injection over two years, the chancellor has announced, in what she called the biggest spending increase outside Covid since 2010. But health experts said patients may not feel the impact as much of the increase would be absorbed by pay rises and higher care costs.

Announcing the “down payment” on the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, due in spring 2025, Rachel Reeves said the NHS was the nation’s “most cherished public service” and that the extra funding would help the government cut waiting lists.

“This is the largest real-terms growth in day-to-day NHS spending outside of Covid since 2010,” she said. “Because of this record injection of funding, because of the thousands of additional beds that we have secured, and because of the reforms that we are delivering in our NHS, we can now begin to bring waiting lists down more quickly and move towards our target for waiting times to be no longer than 18 weeks by delivering on our manifesto commitment for 40,000 extra hospital appointments a week.”

Health experts welcomed the extra funding but cautioned that more investment in the NHS would be needed for patients to notice the difference. Siva Anandaciva, the chief analyst at the King’s Fund thinktank, said: “The health spending announced today is unlikely to be enough for patients to see a real improvement in the care they receive.”

While the budget increase would help sustain services, “it is unlikely to drastically improve care over the rest of this year, and certainly not overnight”, he added, because much of the £22.6bn extra would be absorbed by NHS staff pay increases and the rising cost of delivering care.

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Source: The Guardian, 30 October 2024

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Huge cyber attack caused minimal patient harm, ICB claims

A cyber attack which crippled a region’s pathology system for three months caused only five cases of “moderate” harm and no significant harm, the NHS has claimed.

The Synnovis cyber attack in June left GPs across six boroughs in London unable to order blood tests, and more than 1,000 inpatient procedures were cancelled at two large hospital trusts.

But South East London Integrated Care Board said this week 498 incidents linked to the attack had been assessed, and all of them were judged to have done either “no harm” or “low harm” — except for five at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals, which were assessed as “moderate” harm.

The NHS’s incident response process judges “moderate” harm as where a patient “did not need immediate life-saving intervention” but needed or is likely to need other follow-up care. It is also triggered by them limiting a patient’s independence for less than six months or “affect[ing] the success of treatment, but without meeting the criteria for reduced life expectancy or accelerated disability.”

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Source: HSJ, 30 October 2024

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Canada: Alberta doctor sounds alarm after 7 patients contract infection from organ transplants

A disease that is more commonly associated with the trenches of the First World War, and can sometimes be found in refugee camps, has been detected in several patients in Alberta who received organ transplants.

Bartonella quintana, an infection caused by body lice, has been found in seven organ transplant recipients in Alberta since 2022, according to Dr. Dima Kabbani, a transplant infectious disease physician who treated the patients.

"It was quite alarming to us, especially that we know that this bacteria can cause a more serious type of infection because sometimes it can affect your heart valve or it can affect some of the major organs," Kabbani said.

"We were surprised to see that type of infection in Alberta."

The disease, which presents as skin lesions, was transferred to organ recipients from their deceased donors, all of whom were people who had been living with homelessness and who had been infected themselves.

"It signals that the bacteria is actually around individuals who are unhoused. So it tells you about a bigger public health problem," Kabbani said.

"If these individuals had access to just water to wash their clothes, or to shower, then we should not have been seeing this type of infection in people who are unhoused in Alberta."

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Source: CBC, 26 October 2024

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This mother made six attempts to raise the alarm about her sick toddler. Doctors told her he’d be fine. They were fatally wrong

On the morning of 30 November 2022, Keri-Sue McManus sat down with her three-year-old son, Micah, to watch the TV series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. 

She was sensitive to his mood because it wasn’t the first time Micah had visited the emergency room in recent weeks. In fact, it was the third time Keri-Sue had taken her toddler to hospital, and the sixth time that month she had contacted various doctors about his deterioration: he had a lack of appetite, weakness, fatigue and severe dizziness, and these symptoms were getting worse.

Each time, she was reassured he would get better. One medic even implied that their frequent visits to the hospital were giving her son anxiety. It was suggested the mother should think twice about taking him in again, for his own sake – hence the cartoon.

In the Daniel Tiger episode, the cub, nervously approaching his appointment, is told: “The hospital is a place where doctors and nurses work together to help you get better.” But that’s not the way it worked out for Micah, who died just hours after he arrived on this third visit, after a series of clinicians failed to take his condition seriously.

I’ve relived all those moments a thousand times. What if I’d gone to this doctor; what if I’d said it this way instead of that way

“Daniel goes to hospital and the doctors fix him and everybody’s so nice. And then he gets to go home,” Keri-Sue remembers of the cartoon. “It’s like a fairytale that we didn’t get to live out.”

Micah’s story casts light on how parents, especially mothers, are frequently patronised and dismissed by the medical profession. “I can’t think of any other way to describe it besides gaslighting,” Keri-Sue says when we speak. “It’s your own child, so you get a feeling or you notice something. You know your child’s normal state better than anybody else and you’re paying attention more than anybody else. I’ve relived all those moments a thousand times. What if I’d gone to this doctor; what if I’d said it this way instead of that way. But the reality is that they weren’t paying attention and doing their job.

“Part of my grief has been trying to wrap my head around how it all happened.”

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Source: The Guardian, 26 October 2024

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‘I thought a vaginal mesh would help - instead it left me sobbing in agony’

Women suffering complications from vaginal mesh implants, including after removal, are calling on the Government to overhaul the compensation process.

Sharon Marchant, 61, from Bedfordshire, is one of thousands of women living with life-changing complications from a vaginal mesh implant.

Vaginal mesh, which is made from the same material used to make drinks bottles, is an implant used to treat pelvic organ prolapse and stress urinary incontinence.

For years it was viewed as the gold standard treatment for incontinence and prolapse in many women, but was later found to cause debilitating side effects including infection, pelvic and leg pain, difficulty urinating, pain during sex, and incontinence.

Earlier this week it was revealed that propylene, the material used commonly used in vaginal mesh implants starts to degrade within 60 days of being implanted in the pelvis.

Ms Marchant told i of the severe physical and mental pain she suffered due to her vaginal mesh implant.

In 2014, she was recommended for a mesh implant after being diagnosed with stress-caused urinary incontinence.

At the time, Ms Marchant did not know much about the vaginal mesh. “I hadn’t heard anything about it – good, bad or indifferent.

“Having been a nurse in my younger years, I just thought, well, if they’re doing this, they must know what they’re doing,” she said.

Within weeks she noticed something was wrong.

“I could feel something that was uncomfortable. And so I had to do a self examination, and then I very quickly realised with the use of a mirror, there was a very large lump of blue mesh exposed.”

She opted for a complete removal of the mesh and is relieved it is now gone. But as a result her stress incontinence worsened, requiring her to take new medication and does not feel comfortable enough to start a new relationship.

“It’s just taken away a huge portion of my life,” she said.

Some women are so desperate for the procedure they are travelling to the US and paying up to £30,000 for the procedure, i was told.

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Source: iNews, 26 October 2024

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Integrated care ICS told it’s ‘top down’ and ‘lacks effective leadership’

An under-pressure integrated care system has been told it lacks “effective leadership” and is “too centralised and top-down” in a survey of partner organisations.

Only 10% of senior leaders said Greater Manchester ICS had the necessary leadership and skills to deliver on its priorities. And only 7% agreed it had “clear roles, effective leadership and efficient processes”, in a survey carried out over the summer.

The work commissioned by the ICB received responses from 156 senior leaders in the ICB, its providers, local authorities, place teams, primary care, social care and voluntary and community services in the patch.

Several described the system’s leadership as “too centralised and top-down”, with “the tension between centralised control at the GM level and local autonomy” sparking “the most significant numbers of qualitative feedback” to the work, according to an ICB board paper this month.

Some also described “bullying by senior leaders and smaller organisations being treated inequitably”.

“Recent restructures and upheavals” have “weakened” a “history of great partnership working in Greater Manchester”, the survey feedback summary adds.

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Source: HSJ, 29 October 2024

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Northern Ireland women face 'foetal scan discrimination'

Pregnant women in Northern Ireland face discrimination over not being offered early scans for foetal abnormalities, according to gynaecology experts.

Early scans are routine in the rest of the UK.

Several patients, who contacted BBC News NI, described the trauma they experienced after their "non-viable" pregnancies were not detected until about 20 weeks.

In Scotland, Wales and England antenatal screening which tests for anomalies is offered to all pregnant women in the first trimester – between 11 and 13 weeks.

The Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (RCOG) said women in Northern Ireland have foetal abnormalities diagnosed "too late" and should not have to wait until their 20-week scan.

Dr Caitriona Monaghan, a consultant in maternal foetal medicine, said the late diagnosis can limit access to care.

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Source: BBC News, 3 October 2024

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WHO says 2023 saw the highest number of tuberculosis cases on record

More than eight million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) last year, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, the highest number recorded since the U.N. health agency began keeping track.

About 1.25 million people died of TB last year, the new report said, adding that TB likely returned to being the world’s top infectious disease killer after being replaced by COVID-19 during the pandemic. The deaths are almost double the number of people killed by HIV in 2023.

WHO said TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific; India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Pakistan account for more than half of the world's cases.

“The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.

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Source: The Independent, 29 October 2024

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Cancer patients’ scans will be cancelled over ‘severe’ supply shortages of vital chemical, minister warns

Cancer scans will be delayed and cancelled due to a “severe” shortage of a chemical which has left hospitals with “no supply at all”, a government minister has warned.

The Department of Health and Social Care issued a critical alert on Friday over the “severe shortage” of a radioactive chemical needed for the diagnosis of thousands of cancers, including prostate and breast cancer.

The fresh alert comes after The Independent revealed warnings from doctors and specialists in August that cancer care had been hit by a “perfect” storm in shortages of radioisotopes. Experts at the British Nuclear Medicine Society told The Independent at the time hundreds of cancer scans were being cancelled due to worsening shortages.

Now minister Karin Smyth has admitted the fresh shortage will lead to delays in access to care and cancellations as officials have been unable to mitigate the impact of the shortages.

The shortage comes after pharmaceutical supplier, Curium, was forced to stop production of a nuclear product that is needed to create Technetium-99m, a radioactive chemcial used in diagnostic imaging.

As a result of the shortage, clinicians are having to prioritise patients needing the most urgent scans, while hospitals have been called on to aid one another.

The shortage is expected to last for at least four weeks.

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