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Sam

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  1. Sam
    Reductions in the number of long ambulance delays have come at a “huge cost” as hospitals are having to take in more emergency patients than they have space for, NHS England’s urgent care director has said.
    Sarah-Jane Marsh told NHS England’s board meeting on Thursday that emergency departments and hospital wards are now taking more “risk” by taking extra patients in a bid to get ambulances back on the road quicker.
    This year, many fewer hours have been lost to ambulance delays, although the total number of delays of more than 60 minutes is approaching the same as last winter. Emergency department waits in November and December were better than last year, although still much worse than pre-covid and a long way below targets. 
    But Ms Marsh said the improvement was a result of hospitals agreeing to take more patients into EDs and acute wards, even when they did not have space or staff to properly care for them.
    She said: “It’s come at a huge cost. Some of the things we have achieved are because we have moved pressures around in the system.
    “We have moved risk out of people’s houses and from the back of ambulances, and in some cases we’ve moved that into emergency departments [and] wards, that have had to take the pressure of taking additional patients.
    “Next year one of our learnings is that we need to have a really big focus on what is happening inside our hospitals [so] we decongest some very crowded areas.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 1 February 2024
  2. Sam
    Treatments for seven conditions such as sore throats and earaches are now available directly from pharmacists, without the need to visit a doctor.
    The Pharmacy First scheme will allow most chemists in England to issue prescriptions to patients without appointments or referrals.
    NHS England says it will free up around 10 million GP appointments a year.
    Pharmacy groups welcome the move but there is concern about funding and recent chemist closures.
    Pharmacists can carry out confidential consultations and advise whether any treatment, including antibiotics, are needed for the list of seven minor ailments.
    Patients needing more specialist or follow-up care will be referred onwards.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 31 January 2024
  3. Sam
    Senior leaders are resorting to “ticking the duty of candour box” instead of developing a “just and learning” culture in their organisations because their bandwidth is full, the patient safety commissioner has said.
    Speaking with HSJ as she begins the second year of her first term in the newly-established role, Henrietta Hughes said the bandwidth of senior leaders is “too full for them to make and maintain the necessary culture change”.
    She warned the duty of candour — giving patients and families the right to receive open and transparent communication when care goes wrong — gets seen as a “bit of a tick box exercise, ‘doc tick’ as it’s described to me, which is a bit depressing really”.
    A GP herself, she said individual doctors typically respond to concerns or they are handled by someone who knows the patient. Elsewhere, complaints are often addressed through a chief executive’s office, once all staff have provided written statements, she said.
    She added: “[In general practice] it feels more compassionate and empathetic… I find it’s often quicker to have a conversation with the patient before it turns into a formal complaint and resolves it quickly.”
    “What needs to change is that [NHS] trusts are currently held accountable to a very narrow set of criteria — financial and operational performance,” she said.
    “This is how we will improve safety and experience, transparency, a just and learning culture, and improve morale.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 30 January 2024
  4. Sam
    Campaigners have said that more lives would be lost unless mental health services were reformed. Figures show 120 people each year are killed by people with mental illnesses.
    Julian Hendy, whose father was killed by a psychotic man with a long history of mental ill health 17 years ago, said health professionals must be “more assertive” and work better with other agencies such as the police.
    Valdo Calocane, who was sentenced on Thursday to an indefinite hospital order after being convicted of manslaughter of three people in Nottingham, had fallen off the radar of mental health services, which allowed him to avoid taking his medicine.
    Hendy accused Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, which was responsible for Calocane’s care, of “washing their hands” of him.
    He said: “It’s not responsible and it’s not safe. It doesn’t look after people properly … That hasn’t helped him at all, or protected his rights at all, because he has now committed this terrible offence.”
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: The Times, 26 January 2024
  5. Sam
    NHS England’s drive to encourage patient-initiated appointments is only having a marginal impact on reducing overall outpatient follow-ups, a major study suggests.
    NHS England currently has a target to have 5% of outpatients on patient-initiated follow-up pathways, and hopes this can be increased substantially in future years.
    The headline finding in a study by the Nuffield Trust think tank, which analysed almost 60 million cases, was that for every 5% on PIFU pathways, this roughly corresponded to 2% fewer outpatient follow-up attendances overall.
    It suggests PIFU implementation would need to be dramatically expanded to get anywhere close to a 25% reduction in total follow-up activity, which NHSE had previously targeted by March 2023. As previously reported, there has been little to no reduction so far.
    Chris Sherlaw-Johnson, senior fellow at the Nuffield Trust, said: “As few patients are currently on PIFU pathways at present, it’s not going to have that noticeable impact on the overall number of follow ups.”
    He also stressed it was not clear whether the reduction was caused by the genuine elimination of unnecessary follow-ups or if patients were not returning for care despite needing it.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 25 January 2024
  6. Sam
    The medical leaders of the maternity unit of a flagship hospital threatened with closure have written to their chief executive saying the downgrade would not be safe, HSJ has learned.
    Nineteen obstetric and gynaecological staff, including the clinical director, wrote to the chair and CEO of the Royal Free London Foundation Trust this week saying the proposals to shutter services at the trust’s main site in Hampstead would increase the risk of harm to mothers.
    Their letter said: “Whilst we accept, and support, the need to review provision of maternity and neonatal services across [north central London], aiming for care excellence and best outcomes, we have significant concerns about the current proposals.”
    The letter said the Royal Free was the only unit in NCL to offer a “range of supporting specialist services for complex maternity care”, including rheumatology and neurology and is the “only hospital in NCL to provide both 24-hour interventional radiology and on-site acute vascular surgery and urology support”.
    The medics’ letter said co-morbidities from cardiac, renal, haematological and neurological conditions had driven an increase in maternal mortality over the past decade and that RFH’s services were well-equipped to manage these complex cases.
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 24 January 2024
  7. Sam
    A midwife in New York who reportedly gave 1,500 children homeopathic pellets rather than the vaccinations required by the state has been fined $300,000 by the state's health department.
    The midwife was identified as Jeanette Breen, who operates the Long Island-based Baldwin Midwifery.
    Ms Breen reportedly gave the pellets as an alternative to required vaccinations and then proceeded to falsify the children's immunisation records, according to the New York Department of Health.
    The midwife reportedly began giving the pellets during the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically during the 2019-2020 school year. The majority of the affected children live in Long Island, according to the Associated Press.
    The health department said that the false records have since been voided, and that the families will have to ensure their students are up-to-date with their shots before they can return to school.
    “Misrepresenting or falsifying vaccine records puts lives in jeopardy and undermines the system that exists to protect public health,” State Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a statement.
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 24 January 2024
  8. Sam
    People with buildups of ear wax are being left with hearing loss and socially isolated because of an NHS “postcode lottery” in removing it, a new report claims.
    Ear wax removal services have declined so dramatically that 9.8 million people in England now cannot access help on the NHS, forcing some to pay a “tax on wax” for private treatment.
    The report, from the RNID hearing loss charity, also found that more than half of NHS commissioners are breaching official guidelines by not ensuring that all adults can access care.
    The RNID, formerly the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, said its “horrifying” findings highlighted the misery people who cannot get wax removed are suffering.
    “Ear wax buildup can cause painful and distressing symptoms – such as hearing loss, tinnitus and earache – and lead to social isolation and poor mental health,” the RNID said.
    “With a patchy service across England, many people are left living in silence or forced to pay for private removal,” it added. Non-NHS providers charge £50-£100 a visit to suction wax out. Older people and those who wear hearing aids are most likely to experience buildups.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 24 January 2024
  9. Sam
    More than 30 members of staff at a major NHS mental health hospital have been suspended over claims of serious misconduct including falsifying medical records and mistreating patients, The Independent has learned.
    The suspensions come after an internal investigation into serious conduct allegations at Highbury Hospital in Nottinghamshire, which employs hundreds of staff members.
    The suspended employees include registered professionals – such as doctors, nurses and nursing associates – and non-registered professionals, which would cover healthcare assistants and non-clinical staff.
    It comes just a week after the same trust – Nottinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust – was issued with a warning by the safety watchdog over concerns about the safety of patients at Rampton Hospital, a high secure hospital which has housed patients such as Charles Bronson and Ian Huntley.
    In an email leaked to The Independent, the trust told staff: “We are saddened to report that over recent weeks it has been necessary to suspend over 30 colleagues due to very serious conduct allegations.
    “These allegations have included falsifying mental health observations, as well as maltreatment of patients in our care.
    “We hope we have your understanding in taking action when the conduct of colleagues falls so far outside of what patients deserve.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 23 January 2024
  10. Sam
    The Campaign to Save Mental Health Services in Norfolk and Suffolk is calling for a criminal investigation into an apparent scandal that decisively surfaced over the summer, centred on the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS foundation trust (or NSFT), which sees to mental health provision across those two very large English counties.
    It is centred on the “unexpected” deaths of 8,440 people between April 2019 and October 2022, all of whom were either under the care of the trust, or had been up to six months before they died. The story of the failures that led to that statistic date back at least a decade; the campaign says it amounts to nothing less than “the largest deaths crisis in the history of the NHS”.
    The figure of 8,440 was the key finding of a report by the accounting and consultancy firm Grant Thornton – commissioned by the trust, ironically enough, to respond to anxious claims by campaigners, disputed by the trust, that there had been 1,000 unexpected deaths over nine years.
    There are no consistent national statistics for such deaths, and no universal definition of “unexpected”: in Norfolk and Suffolk, a death will be recorded as such if the person concerned was not identified by NHS staff as critically or terminally ill; the term includes deaths from natural causes as well as suicide, homicide, abuse and neglect. The period in question includes the worst of the pandemic, although the trust’s own annual deaths figures did not reach a peak until 2022-23. But the numbers still seem jaw-dropping: they represent an average of about 45 deaths a week.
    To put that in some kind of perspective, earlier reports about the trust’s deaths record had raised the alarm about a similar number of people dying every month. And the Grant Thornton report included another key revelation: the fact that the trust’s record-keeping was so chaotic that in about three-quarters of cases, it did not know the specifics of how or why the people concerned had died. After its publication, moreover, there were more revelations about the trust, and its culture and practices. 
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 21 January 2024
  11. Sam
    One in 20 patients has to wait at least four weeks to see a GP at a time when funding for family doctor services is falling, NHS figures show.
    In November 2023, 1.5m appointments in England at a GP surgery took place four weeks or more after they were booked, 4.8% of the 31.9m held that month.
    In one in six appointments, 5.4m (17.3%), the patient was forced to wait at least two weeks after booking it to see a GP, practice nurse or other health professional.
    “Millions of people are being left anxious or waiting in pain because they can’t get an appointment with their GP,” said Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, who highlighted the latest evidence underlining the long delays that many patients face to see a GP.
    “Staggering” numbers of patients now have to wait a long time, he said.
    GP leaders blamed the situation on the widespread shortage of family doctors, which they said was making it impossible to keep up with the rising demand for appointments. Burnout due to intense workloads is prompting more GPs to work part time.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 22 January 2024
  12. Sam
    Sexual health services in England are at breaking point, according to local councils who are responsible for running the clinics.
    They say that soaring rates of infections are threatening to overwhelm services and the government needs to provide extra funding.
    Since 2017, more than two-thirds of council areas saw infection climb.
    The Department of Health said more than £3.5bn has been allocated to local public health services this year.
    The Local Government Association (LGA) - representing the councils that provide sexual health clinics - is warning that demand is soaring and services are struggling to keep up.
    It is calling on the government to provide extra funding, as well as to publish a long-term plan to help prevent and treat sexually transmitted infections.
    Nearly three-quarters of councils have seen a rise in rates of syphilis cases, and chlamydia infections are up in more than a third of areas.
    Many of the new cases are younger people, and involve gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, but rates have also increased in heterosexual people.
    Experts believe there has been a rebound effect after the restrictions connected to Covid, but infections were rising well before the pandemic hit.
    There has also been a greater effort to test more people and improve access to services which may have led to more cases being identified.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 20 January 2024
  13. Sam
    Healthcare workers are being told not to report women to the police if they believe their patients may have illegally ended their own pregnancy.
    The Royal College of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians (RCOG) says "deeply traumatised" women are being prosecuted following abortions.
    By law, patients' data must not be disclosed without their consent.
    The new guidance follows a recent rise in police investigations into abortions.
    NHS staff can breach confidentiality rules to give information to the police about possible crimes, but only if it is in the "public interest". The RCOG says it is "never" in the public interest to report women who have abortions, and that they must be safeguarded.
    In the first official guidance issued of its kind, a healthcare worker must "justify" any disclosure of patient data or "face potential fitness to practice proceedings".
    The organisation says it is "concerned" by the rising number of police investigations following abortions and pregnancy loss, and the effect this might have on "especially vulnerable" patients.
    Dr Jonathan Lord, RCOG's medical director, told the BBC: "A law that was originally designed to protect a woman is now being used against her.
    "We have witnessed life-changing harm to women and their wider families as a direct result of NHS staff reporting women suspected of crimes, and we just don't think that would happen in other areas of healthcare.
    "We deal with the most vulnerable groups who may be concerned about turning to regulated healthcare at all, and we need them to trust us".
    .Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 22 January 2024
  14. Sam
    Four carers who were convicted of abusing patients at a secure hospital have been given suspended sentences.
    An undercover BBC Panorama investigation showed patients being mocked by staff at Whorlton Hall in County Durham between 2018 and 2019.
    The four former staff, who are all men, were sentenced on Friday after being convicted by a jury last year.
    Judge Chris Smith said Whorlton Hall was an "unpredictable and inherently frightening place to live".
    The specialist hospital for people with complex needs was privately run by Cygnet, but funded by the NHS.
    It has since closed.
    Judge Smith said Whorlton Hall had a "malign culture" and was an "unpredictable and inherently frightening place to live."
    He added: "Each of you failed those patients and their families. It was a fundamental breach of trust."
    Read full story
    Source: BBC New, 20 January 2024
  15. Sam
    Theatre staff at a major hospital “deliberately slowed down” elective activity to limit the number of operations that could be done each day, an NHS England review has been told.
    The culture in theatres at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, run by East Kent Hospitals University Foundation Trust, was a “significant issue” according to an education quality intervention review report into trauma and orthopaedic training at the hospital.
    The review, dated October and made public by NHSE in December 2023, was launched after concerns were raised by staff at the trust in the General Medical Council’s national training survey, published every July.
    Problems raised by junior doctors and their supervisors to the NHSE review included perceptions that juniors were made to feel uncomfortable by the trauma theatre team and that there was also “animosity” from the trauma theatre team towards surgeons.
    The review said trauma theatre staff were heard “bragging” about their behaviour towards surgeons and that they resisted the number of cases scheduled on a list, claiming it was “unrealistic".
    Read full story (paywalled)
    Source: HSJ, 19 January 2024
  16. Sam
    Caroline remembers screaming. It was like an electric shock which went from her neck to her toes. It was like being tasered in her most intimate area. She could not move because she was scared. She called out to the doctor to stop.
    “I can’t believe what happened to me was done in an NHS hospital,” Caroline, 56, says. “I feel that if they were wearing black balaclavas it would have suited what I experienced more. I felt like I was subjected to a very violent assault. That is the trauma that I’m dealing with now.”
    Caroline is one of thousands of women who have faced excruciating pain when undergoing a hysteroscopy, a medical procedure used to examine inside the womb, where biopsies may be taken. It is used to detect cancer, pre-cancer and other benign abnormalities.
    One in three women face severe pain during a hysteroscopy – rating it at least seven out of 10 – according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. That means thousands of women in the UK could be left traumatised by this medical procedure each year.
    Campaigners believe the NHS is failing to properly inform patients of the pain they may endure. The NHS website describes it as a “simple” and “relatively quick” procedure which is “not usually carried out under anaesthetic”.
    But women who have spoken to The Big Issue describe feeling “violated” during a hysteroscopy. They believe they were unable to give “informed consent” and some have been left with long-term physical and psychological trauma.
    Read full story
    Source: The Big Issue, 18 January 2024
    Related reading on the hub:
    Painful hysteroscopy Through the hysteroscope: Reflections of a gynaecologist The normalisation of women’s pain
  17. Sam
    Fewer Americans are dying of cancer, part of a decades-long trend that began in the 1990s as more people quit smoking and doctors screened earlier for certain cancers.
    However, the American Cancer Society warned that those gains are threatened by an increase in cancers among people younger than 55, in particular cervical and colorectal cancer, and by the continued disparities between white Americans and people of colour.
    “The continuous sharp increase in colorectal cancer in younger Americans is alarming,” said Dr Ahmedin Jemal, senior vice-president for surveillance and health equity science at the American Cancer Society.
    “We need to halt and reverse this trend by increasing uptake of screening, including awareness of non-invasive stool tests with follow-up care, in people 45-49 years, [old]” said Jemal.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 17 January 2024
  18. Sam
    Half of surgeons in England have considered leaving the NHS amid frustration over a lack of access to operating rooms, a new survey shows.
    More than 3,000 surgeons contemplated quitting the health service in the last year, with two-thirds reporting burn out and work-related stress to be their main challenge, a new survey by the Royal College of Surgeons England has revealed.
    As the NHS tries to reduce the 7.61 million waiting list backlog, the survey, covering one quarter of all UK surgeons, found that 56% believe that access to operating theatres is a major challenge.
    RCS England president, Mr Tim Mitchell, said: “At a time when record waiting lists persist across the UK, it is deeply concerning that NHS productivity has decreased.
    “The reasons for this are multifactorial, but access to operating theatres and staff wellbeing certainly play a major part. If surgical teams cannot get into operating theatres, patients will continue to endure unacceptably long waits for surgery.
    “There is an urgent need to increase theatre capacity and ensure existing theatre spaces are used to maximum capacity. There is also a lot of work to be done to retain staff at all levels by reducing burnout and improving morale.”
    Read full story
    Source: The Independent, 18 January 2024
  19. Sam
    Thousands of lives could be saved if safe rooms were set up in UK cities where people could be supervised while they get high, the world’s largest review of the effectiveness of drug-consumption rooms and overdose-prevention centres (OPCs) has found.
    The part-government-funded study published on Thursday also found the facilities could slash the transmission of fatal diseases, as well as reduce drug litter, the pressure on ambulance callouts and the burden on hospitals.
    Similar facilities already operate in France, the US, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Denmark, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Mexico, Iceland and Colombia.
    Each unit hosts from 20 to 400 users a day and is supposed to provide somewhere for people to take drugs in the presence of trained health workers who intervene if an overdose occurs.
    They also mean people don’t have to rush their drug taking, can access clean needles, and get help with other health issues, from testing for hepatitis B and HIV to accessing mental-health support.
    But none has yet been deployed officially in the UK, and the report warns the absence “costs lives”.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 11 January 2023
  20. Sam
    Most key NHS targets have been missed for at least seven years across the UK, BBC News research shows.
    The review of records going back 20 years also reveals Northern Ireland and Wales have never met the four-hour accident-and-emergency (A&E) target.
    The analysis focused on the three key hospital targets, covering A&E, cancer and waiting times for planned care.
    In the past seven, the only one to have been met is the A&E target in Scotland - and that was during lockdown in 2020, when the number of visits to A&E plummeted.
    All four nations said improving waiting times was a priority and investment was being made.
    But King's Fund think tank chief analyst Siva Anandaciva said the findings should "act as a wake-up call".
    "These are the key totemic targets," he said. "The length of time they have been missed is incredible."
    Patients groups warned the delays were putting patients at risk.
    Patients Association chief executive Rachel Power said the analysis showed the NHS was in "permacrisis".
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 10 January 2024
  21. Sam
    Mylissa Farmer’s pregnancy was doomed. But no one would help her end it.
    Over the course of a few days in August 2022, Farmer visited two hospitals in Missouri and Kansas, where doctors agreed that because the 41-year-old’s water had broken just 18 weeks into her pregnancy, there was no chance that she would give birth to a healthy baby. Continuing the pregnancy could risk Farmer’s health and life – yet the doctors could not act.
    Weeks earlier, the US supreme court had overturned Roe v Wade and abolished the national right to abortion. It was, legal counsel at one hospital determined, “too risky in this heated political environment to intervene”, according to legal filings.
    In immense pain and anguish, Farmer ultimately traveled several hours to Illinois, where abortion is legal. There, doctors were able to end her pregnancy.
    Farmer’s account is detailed in a legal complaint she filed against the hospitals, arguing that they broke a federal law that requires hospitals to treat patients in medical emergencies. In a first-of-its-kind investigation, the US government sided with Farmer and declared that the two hospitals had broken the law.
    The future of the government’s ability to invoke that law to protect women seeking emergency abortions is now in question. The law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), is at the heart of the US supreme court’s latest blockbuster abortion case, which comes out of Idaho.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 9 January 2024
  22. Sam
    In 2016, Kettering General Hospital (KGH) became the focus of a major criminal inquiry. Documents seen by the BBC reveal detectives looked for evidence of gross negligence manslaughter over the treatment of Jorgie Stanton-Watts, a vulnerable toddler.
    Seven years of investigations followed, by the hospital, regulators and a coroner. The family has struggled to hold people to account.
    Since Jorgie's death, a BBC investigation has heard from more than 50 parents with serious concerns about the treatment of their children, many of whom died or suffered injury.
    The Northamptonshire hospital has also been inspected regularly.
    In April the Care Quality Commission (CQC) downgraded the hospital's children's services to inadequate, the lowest possible rating.
    Read full story
    Source: BBC News, 10 January 2024
  23. Sam
    The Royal College of Nursing has warned of an increase risk of Covid among hospital staff and patients due to the NHS’s failure to follow World Health Organization advice about infection control during a current spike in cases.
    The most recent figures showed one in 24 people in England and Scotland had Covid on 13 December, up from one in 55 two weeks before.
    Last week WHO expressed concern about a new subvariant of Omicron, labelled JN.1, after its rapid spread in the Americas, western Pacific and European regions. To tackle the increase, the WHO advised that all health facilities “implement universal masking” and give health workers “respirators and other PPE”.
    Now the RCN has written to the four chief nursing officers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland asking why this guidance has not been introduced across the NHS.
    The letter, seen by the Guardian, points out that existing guidance in the national infection prevention and control manual (NIPCM) does not mandate hospital staff to use masks. It also leaves decisions about respirators to local risk assessors.
    The RCN says this guidance to UK hospitals is “inconsistent” with WHO advice.
    The letter by Patricia Marquis, the RCN’s director for England, calls for urgent revision to the NIPCM guidance to ensure the “universal implementation” of masks and respirators for health workers.
    Read full story
    Source: The Guardian, 22 December 2023
  24. Sam
    A mother who endured a botched surgery at the hands of a disgraced neurosurgeon claims NHS Tayside tried to silence her against making complaints.
    Professor Sam Eljamel removed Jules Rose's tear duct during a failed attempt to operate on a brain tumour - setting the 55-year-old on a path to becoming a prolific campaigner for patients' rights.
    Ms Rose, however, has received sight of documents that show NHS Tayside writing to the then-health minister Humza Yousaf to say she had been "aggressive" and "vulgar" and they would no longer communicate with her.
    In a letter in response, Mr Yousaf says he sees no evidence of any such conduct by the mother-of-two and tells the health board to enter into mediation with her.
    Ms Rose said: "In the letter I have been given, Humza Yousaf writes back and say, 'She's quite right to feel aggrieved at the treatment she's received.
    "'Therefore, I suggest that you continue liaising with Miss Rose and enter into mediation.'
    "This was last November but I've only just had copies of the letters sent to me and when I saw them I thought, 'They've tried to shut me down, they're tried to silence me'."
    The ongoing dispute with NHS Tayside is as a result of Ms Rose's long-running campaign for justice for patients - thought to be as many as 270 - harmed by Eljamel while he was in the health board's employ.
    Read full story
    Source: The Herald, 16 December 2023
  25. Sam
    UK organisations responsible for protecting the public from advertisements of prescription-only drugs are putting patients at risk from the harms of weight loss drugs by not enforcing the law, critics have told The BMJ.
    The UK’s Human Medicines Regulations 2012 prohibit the advertising of prescription drugs to the general public, and companies that break the rules can be sanctioned with fines, orders to issue a corrective statement, or prosecution.
    Legal responsibility for regulating advertisements for medicines in the UK rests with the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) on behalf of health ministers. But there is also a system of self-regulation with a number of organisations operating their own codes of practice, including the Advertising Standards Authority.
    But The BMJ has found that the MHRA has not issued a single sanction for prescription drugs in the past five years. And among 16 cases where the MHRA took action by requesting changes to advertisements for weight loss drugs from June 2022 to July 2023, all were triggered by external complaints, not internal mechanisms, and none resulted in sanctions.
    Read full story
    Source: The BMJ, 13 December 2023
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