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Sam

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  1. Sam
    Hospital doctors are being sent home from daytime shifts and told to come back and work overnight in the latest stark illustration of the NHS’s crippling staff shortage.
    Medics are having to change their plans at the last minute because hospitals cannot find any others to plug gaps in the night shift medical rota and need to ensure they have enough doctors on duty.
    Hospital bosses are forcing last-minute shift changes on junior doctors – trainees below the level of consultant up to the level of senior registrar – because staff sickness and the scarcity of locum medics has left them struggling to ensure patients’ safety is maintained overnight.
    One trainee doctor in south-west of England told how they started their shift as planned at 8am. However, “by mid-morning the doctor that was meant to be working that night, that I would hand over to, had called in ill”.
    The doctor stopped working at 11am, drove home – an hour away – and came back to work the night shift at 11pm. “By the time I returned I had already worked for three hours and driven for three hours. That’s an extra six hours on top of a busy night shift of 12.5 hours,” they said.
    Dr Julia Patterson, the chief executive of EveryDoctor, said: “We are hearing of escalating problems with NHS doctors being forced to work unsafe, unfair hours."
    “Patient safety is of paramount importance to all doctors, but this situation is simply not sustainable. When mistakes occur, staff are blamed. But staff are working in an unworkable system.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 11 July 2022
  2. Sam
    The number of knee replacement operations carried out has dropped in regions of England with restrictions on surgery for overweight patients, with people in more deprived areas worst affected, researchers have found.
    Patients needing surgery but unable to lose weight are being denied surgery that could ease pain and increase mobility, the team from the University of Bristol said.
    Health campaigners expressed alarm, claiming the policy was a “blunt tool” being used to replace conversations between doctors and patients and risked exacerbating health inequalities.
    Over the past decade, rules have been brought in by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) across England to restrict access to hip and knee replacement surgery for patients who are overweight or obese.
    The study, funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research, suggests that regions that introduced policy changes for access to knee replacement surgery based on a patient’s weight or BMI have seen a decline in surgery.
    The lead author, Joanna McLaughlin, of the Bristol Medical School, said: “Our study raises the concern that these policies are linked with worsening health inequalities with fewer NHS operations for the least affluent groups.
    “We could see the rates of surgery dropped for those worst off but increased for those who are best off, which correlates with more private surgery going on in those areas.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 29 June 2022
  3. Sam
    Diabetes patients have been warned that non-attendance at eye-test appointments puts them at greater risk of developing unnecessary sight loss.
    The Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) has described the attendance rates at clinics in Northern Ireland as "alarmingly low" .
    It said 20% to 40% of patients were not showing up for their appointments on any given day.
    Prof Tunde Peto, clinical lead for the NI Diabetic Eye Screening Programme, said the most common of many complications caused by diabetes was diabetic eye disease.
    Diabetes can cause cataracts early on but it can also affect the retina at the back of the eye, "which will eventually lead to sight loss if not treated on time," Prof Peto explained.
    "Diabetic retinopathy causes no symptoms until it can be just about too late to treat," she said.
    Ian Catlin from Ballymoney has experienced sight loss due to diabetic retinopathy.
    He has had Type 1 diabetes since childhood and became aware of problems with his eyesight in his mid-30s.
    Mr Catlin said he put off asking for medical help because of the fear of what he would be told."I did eventually go, but you're scared and you put your head in the sand," he said.Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 15 June 2022
  4. Sam
    Pharmacists say physical and verbal abuse against them has become unacceptably common and many now feel unsafe when at work.
    Police forces say they are being called out to handle pharmacy-based crimes.
    The Pharmacists' Defence Association (PDA) says there have been reports of a stabbing and physical attacks in pharmacies around the UK and that more needs to be done to enforce the NHS's zero tolerance policy on worker abuse..
    Pharmacist Conor McAreavey was stabbed in the hand with a knife at his pharmacy in Belfast in March. He told the BBC he was "very lucky" not to have suffered tendon damage.
    Glasgow pharmacist Chand Kausar was threatened with a knife by an agitated patient, who - after demanding non-prescribed medication - produced a six-inch knife and cornered her against a wall.
    "I just froze," explains Ms Kausar. "My hands were above my head and I could hear all the noise around me, but I actually felt very calm. In my head all was quiet. I remember thinking it was like a movie scene. I'd never seen a knife like that, and I never imagined I'd have one held to my throat."
    The PDA launched an online survey in April 2022 and nearly 550 community pharmacists, mostly staff working in England, have responded so far.
    Some 468 of them - 85% - say they, or someone they work with, experienced verbal or racial abuse in the previous month while at work.
    One respondent said: "I feel terrified going to work every single day, and yet management are ignoring the issue."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 6 June 2022
     
  5. Sam
    Doctors’ routine dismissal of women’s debilitating health problems as “benign” has contributed to gynaecology waiting lists soaring by 60% to more than half a million patients, a senior health leader has said.
    The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) president, Dr Edward Morris, told the Guardian that waiting lists for conditions such as endometriosis, prolapse and heavy bleeding had increased by a bigger proportion than any other area of medicine in the past two years.
    Many such conditions are defined as medically benign despite being life-limiting and progressive in some cases. In medicine, “benign” is traditionally used to indicate non-cancerous conditions, but Morris said institutionalised gender bias meant the term was used more widely in gynaecology, resulting in conditions being “normalised” by non-specialists and deprioritised within the NHS.
    We have to change the language. We have to call it what it is,” said Morris. “These conditions cause huge amounts of suffering to women. Being lumped in a topic called benign gynaecology downplays the importance and suffering.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2022
     
  6. Sam
    Two talented physicians, a patient who sacrificed his life and a selfless receptionist were the four people killed on 1 June 1 a shooting inside a medical office building on the Saint Francis Health System campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 
    Police in Tulsa say the gunman, Michael Louis, had gone to the hospital for back surgery 19 May and was treated by Dr Preston Phillips. Louis was discharged from the hospital 24 May and subsequently called Dr Phillips' office several times complaining of pain and seeking additional treatment. The surgeon saw Mr. Louis on 31 May  for more treatment, police said. 
    On 1 June, Mr Louis called Dr Phillips' office again complaining about pain and seeking additional care. Mr Louis purchased an AR-15-style rifle that afternoon, just hours before the shooting, police said.
    Dr Phillips was killed in the shooting and was the gunman's primary target, police said. "He blamed Dr Phillips for the ongoing pain following surgery," Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said at a news conference. 
    Read full story
    Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 2 June 2022
  7. Sam
    Few of the 23 million Americans with lingering symptoms are getting answers – in this dangerous void, alternative providers and wellness companies have created a cottage industry of Long Covid miracle cures.
    Some doctors ply controversial blood tests that claim to identify evidence of the elusive disease. Other practitioners speak assuredly about the benefits of skipping breakfast and undergoing ozone therapy, or how zinc can bring back loss of taste or smell. Some desperate patients have gone overseas for controversial stem cell therapy. Over the next seven years, the global complementary and alternative medicine industry is expected to quadruple in value; analysts cite alternative Covid therapies as a reason for growth.
    Robert McCann, a 44-year-old political strategist from Lansing, Michigan, sleeps for 15 hours – and when he wakes up, he still finds it impossible to get out of bed. Sometimes he wakes up so confused that he’s unsure what day it is.
    McCann tested positive for Covid in July 2020. He had mild symptoms that resolved within about a week. But a few months later, pain, general confusion and debilitating exhaustion returned and never fully left. 
    He says he’s skeptical of “miracle cures”. But, after about 17 months of illness and no relief from doctor’s visits, he’s desperate. “I’ll just be frank,” he told me, “if someone has mentioned on the Subreddit that it’s helped them, I’ve probably bought it and tried it.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2022
  8. Sam
    Women undergoing NHS operations are not being routinely informed that a drug commonly used in anaesthesia may make their contraception less effective, putting them at risk of an unplanned pregnancy, doctors have warned.
    Administered at the end of surgery before patients wake up, sugammadex reverses the action of drugs that are given earlier in the procedure to relax the patient’s muscles. The drug is known to interact with the hormone progesterone and may reduce the effectiveness of hormonal contraceptives, including the progesterone-only pill, combined pill, vaginal rings, implants and intra-uterine devices.
    However, new research suggests that robust methods for identifying at-risk patients and informing them of the associated risk of contraceptive failures is not common practice across anaesthetic departments in the UK.
    Current guidance says doctors must inform women of child-bearing age about the drug. Women taking oral hormonal contraceptives should be advised to follow the missed pill advice in the leaflet that comes with their contraceptives, and those using other types of hormonal contraceptive should be advised to use an additional non-hormonal means of contraception for seven days.
    But doctors at a major London hospital trust found no record within the medical notes of relevant patients that they had been given advice on the risks of contraceptive failure due to sugammadex.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2022
  9. Sam
    The United States is now in its fourth-biggest Covid surge, according to official case counts – but experts believe the actual current rate is much higher.
    America is averaging about 94,000 new cases every day, and hospitalizations have been ticking upward since April, though they remain much lower than previous peaks.
    But Covid cases could be undercounted by a factor of 30, an early survey of the surge in New York City indicates.
    “It would appear official case counts are under-estimating the true burden of infection by about 30-fold, which is a huge surprise,” said Denis Nash, an author of the study and a distinguished professor of epidemiology at the City University of New York School of Public Health.
    While the study focused on New York, these findings may be true throughout the rest of the country, Nash said. In fact, New Yorkers likely have better access to testing than most of the country, which means undercounting could be even worse elsewhere.
    “It’s very worrisome. To me, it means that our ability to really understand and get ahead of the virus is undermined,” Nash said.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 2 June 2022
  10. Sam
    At least three people died and more came to ‘severe harm’ after treatment delays across three specialties at one hospital trust, new reports have revealed.
    King’s College Hospital Foundation Trust commissioned harm reviews due to problems with a lack of capacity and poor management of waiting lists in endoscopy, dermatology and ophthalmology pre-pandemic. Most of the problems relate to the trust’s southern site, Princess Royal University Hospital, and took place before the current executive team took over.
    The most recent board papers revealed a review of 614 cases at the PRUH’s endoscopy service found seven cases of “serious harm”. This category includes death and the document revealed three patients had died. 
    The review also “highlighted delays in endoscopy leading to delayed diagnoses of cancer” in 2018-19 and 2019-20.
    Investigators also found a dermatology patient came to “severe harm” after being lost to follow-up twice by the trust.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 17 September 2021
  11. Sam
    A compensation scheme for thousands of people affected by the infected blood scandal, described as the biggest treatment disaster in the history of the NHS, will reportedly be announced within weeks.
    Ministers will set up an arm’s-length body to administer the funds, which could run into hundreds of millions of pounds, and recognise culpability for the scandal for the first time, according to the Sunday Times.
    As many as 30,000 people became severely ill after being given factor VIII blood products that were contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C imported from the US in the 1970s and 80s, or after being exposed to tainted blood through transfusions or after childbirth. On average, one person affected is dying every four days, with approximately 3,000 having died to date.
    Last year, before the then health secretary Matt Hancock’s appearance at the public inquiry into the scandal, the paymaster general, Penny Mordaunt, announced the appointment of Sir Robert Francis QC to examine options for a framework for compensation before the inquiry reports its findings.
    A Cabinet Office spokesperson confirmed the review would be published shortly. “The government intends to publish the study by Sir Robert Francis QC in time for the inquiry and its core participants to consider it before Sir Robert gives evidence to the inquiry in July,” they said. “Government will give full consideration to Sir Robert’s recommendations and evidence to the inquiry.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 29 May 2022
  12. Sam
    Contractors could be required to provide trusts with the findings of criminal records checks on their employees, an update from Michael inquiry into mortuary security has suggested.
    The independent inquiry, chaired by Sir Jonathan Michael, was set up to examine the implications of the sexual assaults on the bodies of women and children in hospital mortuaries by maintenance supervisor and convicted murderer David Fuller.
    A progress report published this month by the inquiry highlighted “responsibilities between trusts and contractors” as an area of concern.
    The report said expectations around information sharing should be made clear in policy and, if sharing is deemed necessary, consideration should be given to what checks and evidence is needed to show this is taking place.
    HSJ understands that Mr Fuller did not declare previous convictions for burglary when he was first employed at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells in 1989.
    Other issues flagged to NHS England by the inquiry included how access to “high-risk areas” is monitored and who requires access to these areas. It added that consideration should be given to monitoring access, involving a review of CCTV and swipe card use.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 20 May 2022
  13. Sam
    Cases of monkeypox are being investigated in European countries, including the UK as well as the US, Canada and Australia.
    Monkeypox is caused by the monkeypox virus, a member of the same family of viruses as smallpox, although it is much less severe and experts say chances of infection are low.
    It occurs mostly in remote parts of central and west African countries, near tropical rainforests.
    There are two main strains of virus - west African and central African.
    Two of the infected patients in the UK travelled from Nigeria, so it is likely that they are suffering from the West African strain of the virus, which is generally mild, but this is as yet unconfirmed.
    Another case was a healthcare worker who picked up the virus from one of the patients.
    More recent cases do not have any known links with each other, or any history of travel. It appears they caught it in the UK from spread in the community.
    The UKHSA says anyone with concerns that they could be infected should see a health professional, but make contact with the clinic or surgery ahead of a visit.
    Initial symptoms include fever, headaches, swellings, back pain, aching muscles and a general listlessness.
    Once the fever breaks a rash can develop, often beginning on the face, then spreading to other parts of the body, most commonly the palms of the hands and soles of the feet.
    The infection usually clears up on its own and lasts between 14 and 21 days.
    Experts say we are not on the brink of a national outbreak and, according to Public Health England, the risk to the public is low.
    Prof Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology, University of Nottingham, said: "The fact that only one of the 50 contacts of the initial monkeypox-infected patient has been infected shows how poorly infectious the virus is.
    "It is wrong to think that we are on the brink of a nationwide outbreak."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 20 May 2022
  14. Sam
    New figures leaked to HSJ show the true volume of 12-hour waiters in emergency departments is more than four times higher than official statistics suggest.
    Internal NHS England figures for February and March show around one in five admissions through ED waited more than 12 hours from arriving until being admitted to a ward – equating to around 158,000 cases.
    The official stats published by NHSE record a slightly different, and shorter, time period, from ‘decision to admit’ to admission. There were around 39,000 of these cases in the same two months, which equates to 4 per cent of admissions through ED, and 5.4 per cent of total emergency admissions.
    The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has long called for the official stats to reflect the total time spent from arrival in ED (as per the internal data), and for trusts to be measured and regulated on this.
    Senior medics have for some time been warning about the patient safety risks of long waiting in EDs and have appealed to NHS England and the government for plans to tackle the crisis.
    Adrian Boyle, vice president of RCEM, said: “This data show the scale of long waiting times in emergency departments and the scale of the patient safety crisis. Performance continues to deteriorate across multiple metrics meaning we are documenting a failing urgent and emergency care system without any system transformation or improvement."
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 13 May 2022
  15. Sam
    More than half of people hospitalised with Covid-19 still have at least one symptom two years after they were first infected, according to the longest follow-up study of its kind.
    While physical and mental health generally improve over time, the analysis suggests that coronavirus patients discharged from hospital still tend to experience poorer health and quality of life than the general population. The research was published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
    “Our findings indicate that for a certain proportion of hospitalised Covid-19 survivors, while they may have cleared the initial infection, more than two years is needed to recover fully,” said the lead author, Prof Bin Cao, of the China-Japan Friendship hospital in China.
    Until now, the long-term health effects of Covid-19 have remained largely unknown, as the longest follow-up studies to date have spanned about a year. The absence of pre-Covid-19 health status data and comparisons with the general population in most studies also made it difficult to determine how well patients with Covid-19 have recovered.
    “Ongoing follow-up of Covid-19 survivors, particularly those with symptoms of long Covid, is essential to understand the longer course of the illness, as is further exploration of the benefits of rehabilitation programmes for recovery,” said Cao. “There is a clear need to provide continued support to a significant proportion of people who’ve had Covid-19, and to understand how vaccines, emerging treatments and variants affect long-term health outcomes.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 11 May 2022
  16. Sam
    Women and babies in the UK are “dying needlessly” because of a lack of suitable medicines to use in pregnancy, according to a report that calls for a radical overhaul of maternal health.
    A “profound” shortage of research and the widespread exclusion of pregnant and breastfeeding women from clinical trials means hardly any new drugs are approved for common medical problems in pregnancy or soon after childbirth, the report finds.
    Meanwhile, scarce or contradictory information about the safety of existing medicines women may be taking for continuing conditions can make it impossible to reach a confident decision on whether or not to continue them in pregnancy, the experts add.
    “While pregnancy in the UK is generally considered safe, women and babies are still dying needlessly as a direct result of preventable pregnancy complications,” the authors say. Each year, 5,000 babies in the UK are either stillborn or die shortly after birth, while about 70 women die of complications in pregnancy.
    The Healthy Mum, Healthy Baby, Healthy Future report draws on evidence from patient groups, clinicians, researchers, lawyers, insurance specialists and the pharmaceutical industry, it proposes “urgent” changes to transform women’s access to modern medicine.
    The report highlights the “profound lack of research activity” and up-to-date information that leaves pregnant women and their physicians in the dark about whether to continue with certain medicines in pregnancy. Some epilepsy drugs, for example, can increase the risk of birth defects, but coming off them can put the woman at risk of severe seizures, which can also harm the baby.
    Lady Manningham-Buller said the situation “urgently needs to change”, with the report setting out eight recommendations to prevent needless deaths.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 12 May 2022
     
  17. Sam
    An NHS boss who had a stroke was taken to A&E by her husband rather than calling for an ambulance because of concerns over long waits.
    In a series of tweets, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust chief executive Deborah Lee praised his swift actions.
    She said he had "bundled her into his car", last week, after she had showed the signs of a stroke because he had heard her "lamenting ambulance delays".
    She is recovering but says it may have been different if they had called 999.
    Waits for an ambulance in England are the longest since new targets were introduced, in 2017.
    And Ms Lee's regional service - the South West - has the longest waits in the country, with category-two calls, which include strokes, taking nearly two hours, on average, to reach patients in March.
    The target is 18 minutes.
    In the tweets, Ms Lee said: "Naturally, I am eternally grateful to my husband for his swift actions… but I can't get one thing out of my head.
    "What if my husband hadn't been there and my daughter had called for an ambulance and I'd been put in the cat[egory]-two stack?"
    She went on to say it was not the fault of the ambulance service and the whole system was "working unrelentingly to this but to no great avail".
    Ms Lee said hospitals were struggling to discharge patients, because of a lack of social care, and so delays were building up in the rest of the system.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 28 April 2022
  18. Sam
    In an ongoing effort to improve care and support for elderly women and women’s health satisfaction and outcomes in general, the government have published their report summarising written responses from 436 organisations and experts from the Women’s Health Strategy call for evidence.
    The organisations that contributed to the report included participants from the charity sector, academia, professional bodies, clinicians, royal colleges and other general experts in women’s health.
    The topics highlighted in the report include:
    Menstrual health and gynaecological conditions, including the impact of premenstrual syndrome on someone’s quality of life. Fertility, pregnancy, pregnancy loss and maternal health, including women not feeling listened to during and after pregnancy and the provision of bereavement support services. Menopause, including suggestions for improvements in training and guidelines for healthcare professionals. Gynaecological and other cancers, including barriers to accessing high-quality, up to date information on risk factors for female cancers. Mental health, including its interaction with other health conditions across women’s life course. Healthy ageing, including the need to increase focus on the health needs of older women and emphasise women may experience the same conditions as men in different ways. Violence against women and girls, including the complications associated with hymenoplasty and barriers to accessing healthcare support for those who’ve been subject to years of violence and abuse. Minister for Women’s Health Maria Caulfield said: “For generations, women have lived in a healthcare system primarily designed by men, for men. We are committed to tackling the gender health gap, and the publication of our strategy later this year will mark a significant step forward.”
    She added: “I want to thank the expert individuals and organisations who took the time to respond to our call for evidence. The insights you have provided have been stark and sobering but will be pivotal to ensuring our strategy represents the first-hand experiences of the health care system.”
    Read full story
    Source: NHE, 13 April 2022
  19. Sam
    Exhausted after three sleepless days in labour, Jane O’Hara, then 34, screamed and burst into tears when the midwives and doctors at Harrogate District Hospital told her the natural birth she wanted was not going to happen.
    She ended up needing life-saving surgery and 11 pints of blood after a severe haemorrhage. Mercifully, Ivy was fine and is now a healthy 12-year-old. 
    In recent weeks, the NHS has been rocked by the conclusions of an inquiry into the worst maternity disaster in its history: 201 babies and nine mothers died and another 94 babies suffered brain damage as a result of avoidable poor care at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust. This has been linked to a culture of promoting natural — that is, vaginal — birth and avoiding caesarean sections. 
    Blame thus far has been aimed largely at the NHS — but parents have started speaking out online about what they believe has been the role of the National Childbirth Trust (NCT), a leading provider of antenatal classes in Britain, in promoting vaginal births.
    “I can absolutely point to key decisions that I made that were influenced by the NCT’s mantra. I was led into a position where I believed I had more control over my birth than I actually did,” says O’Hara, who is now a professor of healthcare quality and safety at the University of Leeds. She believes she was a victim of a “normal birth” ideology that was heavily promoted at the NCT classes she attended.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 10 April 2022
  20. Sam
    Hospital inspectors have uncovered repeated maternity failings and expressed serious concern about the safety of mothers and babies in Sheffield just days after a damning report warned there had been hundreds of avoidable baby deaths in Shrewsbury.
    The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found Sheffield teaching hospitals NHS foundation trust, one of the largest NHS trusts in England, had failed to make the required improvements to services when it visited in October and November, despite receiving previous warnings from the watchdog.
    As well as concerns across the wider trust, a focused inspection on maternity raised significant issues about the way its service is run. When it came to medical staff at the Sheffield trust, the “service did not have enough medical staff with the right qualifications, skills, and experience to keep women and babies safe from avoidable harm and to provide the right care and treatment”, the report said.
    Inspectors found that staff were not interpreting, classifying or escalating measures of a baby’s heart rate properly, an issue that was raised by Donna Ockenden in her review of the Shrewsbury scandal.
    Despite fetal monitoring being highlighted as an area needing attention in 2015 and 2021, the most recent inspection “highlighted that the service continued to lack urgency and pace in implementing actions and recommendations to mitigate these risks, therefore exposing patients to risk of harm”.

    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 5 April 2022
  21. Sam
    Staff failed to provide kind and compassionate care and did not treat children with respect at a private hospital downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’, a report by health inspectors has revealed.
    Huntercombe Hospital Stafford was placed in special measures in 2016, but was rated “good” by the Care Quality Commission two years later.
    Now, its first inspection under provider Huntercombe Young People Ltd in October 2021 has exposed a raft of safety concerns and instances of poor care. Huntercombe Young People Ltd took over the service in February 2021. 
    Heavy reliance on agency staff, workers spotted with their “eyes closed” on observations, and staff not respecting young people’s pronouns were among concerns inspectors flagged.
    Staff observation of patients was also found to be “undermined” by a blind spot where people could self-harm unseen, the CQC report, published today, said.
    Children also told the CQC they felt staff did not always understand their mental health condition or know how to support them, particularly those on the psychiatric intensive care ward with eating disorders or autism.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 10 March 2022
  22. Sam
    Hundreds of people identified as contacts following a tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in a Carmarthenshire village are yet to attend a screening, health officials have said.
    Public Health Wales (PHW) said 31 cases of active TB had been identified since the 2010 outbreak in Llwynhendy.
    PHW urged the 485 people who have been identified as contacts, but not attended a screening, to act.
    More than 2,600 people have attended screenings since June 2019.
    TB is a bacterial infection, spread through inhaling tiny droplets from the coughs or sneezes of an infected person. It is a serious condition, but can be cured with proper treatment.
    PHW said since 2010, 303 people - or more than one in 10 of those who had been screened - had been diagnosed with latent TB, which is not infectious and does not affect a person's quality of life, but may develop into active TB at a later date.
    Dr Brendan Mason, from Public Health Wales, said: "We understand that during the coronavirus pandemic people may have been reluctant to go to a hospital to have their screening done, but I can assure them that there are safety measures in place in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
    "Now is the time to get tested.
    "It is really important that we screen all the contacts identified and make sure that anyone diagnosed with latent or active TB gets the monitoring or treatment that they need to prevent any further spread."
    Read full story
    Source: 24 February 2022
  23. Sam
    Pregnancy-related deaths among US mothers climbed higher in the pandemic’s first year, continuing a decades-long trend that disproportionately affects Black people, according to a new government report.
    Overall in 2020, there were almost 24 deaths per 100,000 births, or 861 deaths total, numbers that reflect mothers dying during pregnancy, childbirth or the year after. The rate was 20 per 100,000 in 2019.
    Among Black people, there were 55 maternal deaths per 100,000 births, almost triple the rate for white people.
    The report from the National Center for Health Statistics does not include reasons for the trend and researchers said they have not fully examined how Covid-19, which increases risks for severe illness in pregnancy, might have contributed.
    The coronavirus could have had an indirect effect. Many people put off medical care early in the pandemic for fear of catching the virus, and virus surges strained the healthcare system, which could have had an impact on pregnancy-related deaths, said Eugene Declercq, a professor and maternal death researcher at Boston University School of Public Health.
    He called the high rates “terrible news” and noted that the US has continually fared worse in maternal mortality than many other developed countries.
    Reasons for those disparities are not included in the data, but experts have blamed many factors including differences in rates of underlying health conditions, poor access to quality healthcare and structural racism.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 23 February 2022
  24. Sam
    Sickle cell patients have begun receiving the first new treatment for the blood disorder in over 20 years.
    The inherited condition can cause severe pain and organ failure, often requiring hospital admissions.
    Crizanlizumab is given as a monthly infusion and is thought to cut visits to A&E by 40%. Loury Mooruth, 62, received the treatment at Birmingham City Hospital, having suffered repeated periods of intense pain for decades.
    During a crisis, patients often need powerful opioid painkillers but Loury, like many others, has faced suspicion when at A&E.
    "You know the protocol when you go in, which needles and so on. They think straight away you are a drug addict - they don't believe you," she says.
    She has refused to go to hospital during a crisis for the past two years because of her negative experiences.
    A report from MPs last year found "serious failings" in sickle cell care with some evidence of discrimination against patients.
    Dr Shivan Pancham, a consultant haematologist at Birmingham City Hospital, told the BBC: "Our patients often find the experience in emergency departments challenging with a lack of understanding of the severity of pain.
    "It is hoped with these new therapies if we reduce the likelihood of attending emergency departments, ultimately this will be much better for the patients."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 24 February 2022
  25. Sam
    A doctor who has suffered violent shakes and hallucinations during her ongoing 15-month battle with long COVID has criticised the government's plan to "live with the virus".
    Dr Kelly Fearnley told Sky News she contemplated ending her own life due to the debilitating long-term effects of coronavirus, which she caught while working on a COVID ward in November 2020.
    The 35-year-old from Leeds, who was previously fit and healthy, initially had flu-like symptoms before she suffered shortness of breath and painful rashes over her body, as well as swelling around her eye.
    More than a year later, she is still unable to return to work due to the effects of long COVID, which have included violent shakes lasting up to 14 hours at a time, hallucinations, night terrors, severe pins and needles in her arms and legs, and a resting heart rate of 140 beats per minute.
    With Prime Minister Boris Johnson set to unveil his "living with COVID" plan on Monday, Dr Fearnley branded it a "strategy of denial, driven by the need to cut costs" and she felt "angry and let down".
    Read full story
    Source: Sky News, 20 February 2022
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