Animal dewormer and a drug used to treat scabies are being sold and promoted as unproven cancer treatments, a BBC investigation has found.
Following a tip off, an undercover journalist was able to buy fenbendazole and ivermectin from a stairlift salesman in south Wales, and also found them for sale on Amazon.
Macmillan Cancer Support said it was concerned by the findings and that a growing number of people were asking about the medicines, despite "no clinical evidence" that they work.
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Source: BBC News, 4 August 2026
In this article for HSJ Aliza Ayaz argues that as heat-related deaths rise and projections for 2050 grow increasingly stark, the NHS must stop treating summer as the quiet season. The case for giving heat the same operational seriousness as winter has never been stronger – and the cost of delay is already being counted in lives.
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Source: HSJ, 5 August 2026
A new blood test aimed at helping doctors diagnose colorectal cancer - the second-leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths - was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
SimpleScreen, made by the California biotech company Freenome, is designed for adults aged 45 and older who are at average risk for the life-threatening disease. It’s designed to detect DNA signals that are linked to colorectal cancer in this age group.
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Source: Independent, 3 August 2026
Racism within the NHS is reportedly on the rise, with staff subjected to vile abuse including being called "monkeys" and patients refusing treatment from non-white healthcare professionals.
Experts, including the Society of Radiographers (SoR), have highlighted a "noticeable" increase in racist incidents from patients over the past 18 months.
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Source: Independent, 4 August 2026
NHS criteria for screening women under 50 for breast cancer are too narrow and missing up to 95% of those at higher risk of developing the disease, researchers have warned.
The current guidelines - set by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (Nice) - focus solely on inherited genes and not other factors such as lifestyle, they found.
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Source: BBC News, 4 August 2026
Clinicians and managers knew of problems with an ear, nose, and throat waiting list five years before a backlog of nearly 9,000 patients came to light, an NHS England review has found.
Despite managers and clinicians being aware, there was no evidence concerns were “acted upon either clinically or operationally”, said the review, which was carried out by a senior operational director in NHSE’s South East region.
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Source: HSJ, 3 August 2026
The Trump administration has effectively shut down most of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's activities, closing the spigot on federal funding estimated to have saved thousands of lives and billions of dollars over the past 27 years by improving medical practice.
In a July 15 letter, the small Department of Health and Human Services agency known as AHRQ told researchers it was halting at least 104 grants, many aimed at improving patient safety.
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Source: CBS News, 30 July 2026
Clinicians and managers knew of problems with an ear, nose and throat waiting list five years before a backlog of nearly 9,000 patients came to light, an NHS England review has found.
Despite managers and clinicians being aware, there was no evidence concerns were “acted upon either clinically or operationally”, said the review, which was carried out by a senior operational director in NHSE’s South East region.
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Source: HSJ, 3 August 2026
NHS England plans to change how it evaluates the success of the controversial Palantir data platform that is being rolled out across the health service after staff highlighted flaws in the analysis.
Emails obtained by the Financial Times via a freedom of information request show the health service intends to modify how it calculates two of its headline figures about the performance of the Federated Data Platform (FDP) in the next quarterly update, more than a year after the data was first published.
The changes will affect two of NHSE’s most widely cited claims: that hospitals using the FDP have delivered 110,000 additional operations and that they have registered a 15 per cent reduction in discharge delays.
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Source: Financial Times, 3 August 2026
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) six years ago and left unable to walk unaided, Numan Unees was facing a challenging future before a pioneering clinical trial gave him new hope.
The 40-year-old is the first patient in Sheffield and the seventh in a global trial to receive an immunotherapy treatment originally developed for some cancers.
Experts said it is still early days, but if this experimental treatment eventually proves to be safe and effective for MS patients it could be a "gamechanger".
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Source: BBC News, 3 August 2026
Deaths of newborns have risen by more than 80 per cent among the most vulnerable people across sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of global aid cuts, including by the UK and US.
Data covering more than three million refugee women across 20 nations, given exclusively to The Independent, shows that neonatal mortality – deaths within the first 28 days after birth – rose by 81 per cent between 2025 and 2026. That is a rise from 3.1 to 5.6 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).
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Source: Independent, 2 August 2026
An NHS mental health trust plans to cut a wide range of its services and axe hundreds of jobs to close a £25m hole in its finances.
The move by the East London foundation trust (ELFT) and the scale of potential cuts involved have been called unfathomable given demand for NHS mental health support is rising rapidly.
The plan has sparked fears that under-18s and adults needing psychological treatment will have to wait longer or be forced to go private, leading “to lives being destroyed”.
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Source: The Guardian, 3 August 2026
The American Red Cross has declared the second-ever national blood supply crisis after blood donations fell to a four-year summer low.
On Monday, the 145-year-old non-profit said that as the United States’ largest single provider of blood products, it now has less than one-day national supply of type O positive blood – the most commonly transfused blood.
Type O positive blood accounts for about 60% of the ARC’s blood distributions and is used across everyday patient care as well as medical emergencies. It can be given to about 80% of patients, according to the ARC.
“Despite thousands of people answering the call to give, blood donations are not keeping pace with hospital demand – which is up during the summer trauma season. Extreme heat, poor air quality and widespread foodborne illnesses are contributing to lower donor turnout this summer, further straining the nation’s blood supply,” the ARC said, appearing to refer to the cyclosporiasis outbreak that is suspected to have affected more than 11,500 people across the US.
Just three additional donors at each blood drive this summer can end the crisis and stabilize the blood supply, according to the ARC, which also stressed the need for a strong supply of every blood type.
“When hospitals have adequate supplies of A, B and AB blood, they can provide patients with blood that matches their blood type whenever possible. This preserves type O blood for patients with type O blood and for life-threatening emergencies, when there isn’t time to determine a patient’s blood type,” it said.
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Source: The Guardian, 30 July 2026
NHS England has told trust boards to take direct responsibility for the safety of AI scribe technology, as national regulatory standards for the tools are lowered.
A joint letter from NHSE and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, sent to trust and integrated care board leaders this week, sets out 18 items which “boards and executive teams should assure themselves [are] in place”.
They cover oversight and accountability, local governance, staff training and awareness, risk management, and commercial procurement.
Among the specific requirements are ensuring clinicians review and approve all AI-generated outputs before they are used in patient care, and that “appropriate professional judgement is maintained”.
“Clear lines of accountability” must be in place for any decisions informed by Ambient Voice Technology, the list says. It instructs organisations to make sure staff “receive appropriate training on the capabilities and limitations of AVT”.
It comes as the MHRA has this week published guidance stating that some AVTs in healthcare will no longer be classed as a medical device.
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Source: HSJ, 30 July 2026
Staff at a major acute trust described a “nepotistic culture” in which poor behaviour went unpunished, a review into how it handled staff concerns has found.
The review at East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust found its organisational culture did not encourage staff to raise concerns, and that they lacked confidence these would be addressed. It reported “fragile” confidence in speaking up, and a lack of triangulation when concerns were raised.
It was carried out by Helen Buckingham, chair of patient and user charity National Voices, and a former director in local NHS organisations and NHS Improvement.
Several interviewees told her of a “nepotistic culture”, where those who fitted in or had the support of important individuals progressed. Board members were frustrated by a lack of consequences for poor behaviour, the review found.
In some cases, consultants who raised concerns had been placed under investigation. And the Freedom to Speak Up service “effectively collapsed in early 2024”, with no FTSU reports recorded for the entire year.
The trust’s board said they found it difficult to triangulate staff concerns with other information.
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Source: HSJ, 31 July 2026
The NHS has scrapped a longstanding scheme that let overseas doctors boost their skills in UK hospitals and was seen as an example of British “soft power”.
Senior doctors have criticised NHS England’s decision to axe the Medical Training Initiative, under which 400 to 500 foreign-trained doctors were given placements in Britain every year.
The MTI is known in the NHS as “earn, learn and return”. It enabled medical graduates from low- and middle-income countries such as Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal to spend up to two years in the health service enhancing their skills, making them better doctors when they went home.
The UK’s medical royal colleges are aghast at the unexpected and “abrupt” axing of a programme they say helped not just the medics but the NHS and their home countries. It had cost NHS England just £176,000 to fund each year and has given thousands of overseas doctors a chance to work in the UK since it was set up in 2011.
Some fear it will exacerbate the already acute shortage of doctors across an NHS that relies very heavily on international graduates, who comprise two-fifths of all its medics.
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Source: The Guardian, 31 July 2026
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