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Anorexic teen challenges NI care – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
A 16-year-old girl with anorexia has won the right to challenge the lack of specialist treatment available for her in Northern Ireland.
She brought the High Court action in a bid to make the health service provide in-patient medical facilities for adolescents with eating disorders.
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Sofa is blamed for heart failure – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
A man who claims chemicals in his sofa caused a serious heart problem is to sue its supplier and manufacturer.
Barry Green, from Plymouth, bought the sofa, made by the Chinese manufacturer Eurosofa, from Land of Leather in September last year.
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Straight to the specialist: Johnson cuts GP referrals – The Guardian 21st October 2008
Patients with back pain will be able to access free treatment from NHS physiotherapists without having to go through a GP, under plans to be unveiled today by the health secretary, Alan Johnson.
In a substantial extension of patient choice, he also wants to give people an opportunity to book appointments with speech therapists, dietitians, podiatrists and other health professionals.
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Harman to block Commons votes on liberalising abortion laws – The Guardian 21st October 2008
Harriet Harman is planning to block a series of Commons votes tomorrow to liberalise Britain’s abortion laws, which could have overturned a ban in Northern Ireland, in a move that was condemned as “disgraceful”. To the dismay of pro-choice MPs, Harman is planning to argue that Britain’s liberal abortion laws could be threatened in the House of Lords if MPs tamper with any aspect of the law. It was last changed in 1990.
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An apparent dirty deal to keep abortion out of Northern Ireland has also led to the shelving of crucial reforms in Britain
When pro-choice demonstrators gather outside parliament today, they really will have cause to protest. In an extraordinary stitch-up, the government has cheated its way out of the abortion debate that was scheduled to be part of tomorrow’s human fertilisation and embryology bill. Campaigners are blistering with fury that procedural sleight of hand will deny the chance to reform the forty-year old abortion act.
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NHS issues warning as anti-superbug gel blamed for death – The Guardian 21st October 2008
Hospitals have been issued with a safety warning following hundreds of cases of misuse of alcohol-based antibacterial gel – including one suspected death.
As the Guardian reported in August the NHS is witnessing rising numbers of cases of patients with drink or drugs problems stealing the £10-a-litre gel and mixing it with orange juice, Lucozade or cola to create powerful cocktails.
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Is the public mood to assisted suicide softening? Where before the swirl of comment arising from an individual’s decision to bring forward their own death would relegate the most important opinion, that of the one who was suffering, to a posthumous echo, on this occasion the immediate reaction to Daniel James’s choice (’He wasn’t prepared for a second-class life’: why injured rugby star went to Switzerland to die, October 18) has been measured. Responses have in the main focused on his proven determination to die, and his parents’ vivid description of a life dominated by suffering.
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Biting back at Oliver’s empire – The Guardian 21st October 2008
Jamie Oliver’s latest healthy eating campaign is being taken up by local authorities, with one already bidding for money to set up a drop-in cooking centre like the one the celebrity chef started in Rotherham earlier this year.
Yesterday Oliver wrote to key government ministers to demand funding for a Food Centre in every British town where people can learn to cook.
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Without proper guidance, some nurseries are feeding children too many veggies and not enough puddings
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Rowenna Davis: The Scouts are right to offer advice on sex – The Guardian 20th October 2008
As an organisation that claims to be about the transition to adulthood, the Scouts are right to offer advice on sex
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The London 2012 chief, Paul Deighton, today defended the event’s £20m-plus sponsorship deal with Cadbury, as the confectionery maker pledged to market its Olympic association to children responsibly.
Cadbury was today officially confirmed as a “tier two” supporter, a level that costs sponsors between £20m and £40m, to be the sole supplier of chocolate and ice cream at the London 2012 Olympics.
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£1m ad campaign targets ‘forgotten’ drinkers – The Guardian 20th October 2008
A recycling bin full of empty alcohol bottles may be a sign you are drinking too much, a UK charity warned today.
The Drinkaware Trust’s new £1m poster campaign shows a recycling bin overflowing with bottles with the slogan “Big party at the weekend?” and a bottle bank with the message “Do you come here often?”
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Patients to be given right to self-refer – The Independent 21st October 2008
For the first time, patients are to be given the right to seek treatment on the NHS for muscular aches and pains, speech difficulties and nutritional advice without going through their GP.
In a boost to patient choice, ministers are removing the GP “gatekeeper” role and allowing patients to refer themselves directly to physiotherapists, speech experts, dieticians and podiatrists who treat foot problems.
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Diabetes soars in Britain as obesity continues to rise – The Times 21st October 2008
The number of people who will die as a result of diabetes is forecast to rise from one in ten to one in seven in less than 20 years unless obesity rates can be reduced significantly.
Costs to the National Health Service of treating the disease are expected to rise by a third by 2025 as the number of people suffering from diabetes reaches a record level.
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Never mind that winter is almost upon us, that we may already be in recession and that we are all fractious, glum and late for our trains. Today, for all of us, salvation is at hand.
A British psychologist has developed a panacea to lighten the darkening mood. In a campus on the edge of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, Richard Wiseman claims to have created the most relaxing room in the world.
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Contentedness gets green light – The Times 21st October 2008
Prisons, hospitals and 1930s Germany are not settings that you would normally associate with relaxation, yet all have helped to furnish the evidence used to create the calming space at the University of Hertfordshire. One of the critical studies used by Richard Wiseman to pick the relaxation room’s green light was conducted in an American prison in the early 1980s, by Ernest Moore. It found that inmates who had a view of green spaces from their cell were less stressed and had less contact with prison health services than those who looked at concrete.
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Action on abuse of disabled parking permits – The Times 21st October 2008
People applying for disabled parking permits will have to be independently assessed. The practice of GPs testing applicants is to cease, amid concern that patients put pressure on them to grant the permits, which can be worth £2,000 a year. The number of blue badges in circulation now exceeds two million.
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Jamie Oliver has written to ministers urging them to re-introduce old fashioned cookery classes in order to tackle the country’s obesity crisis.
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Top-up payments: British cancer patients are paying the price – The Telegraph 20th October 2008
Colin Ross is much better now he’s completed his first course of the drug Revlimid. As Dr Kevin Boyd, his specialist at the Royal Marsden hospital predicted, the drug is having a dramatic effect on Ross’s cancer, multiple myeloma. His paraprotein levels – which indicate the rate of spread of the disease – have come down from 67 to five, which his partner, Wendy Forbes-Newbigin, calls “little short of a miracle”.
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Finger on the Pulse: Max Pemberton on top-up payments and the NHS – The Telegraph 20th October 2008
‘Any questions?” I ask. I look around the room and am met by a sea of faces. A woman tentatively raises her hand. “What do you think of private top-up payments for cancer treatment?” she asks. Silence. One of the unexpected perks of having written a book is that I am invited to literary lunches. Not only does this mean I get fed for free, but that I get to talk to a group of people who actually want – and indeed have paid – to hear me speak. This always strikes me as slightly surprising as most of my patients, who can hear me speak for free, never listen to a word I say.
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Travel advice: vaccinations and anti-malarials – The Telegraph 20th October 2008
Long-haul travel is expensive enough without the added costs of vaccinations and anti-malaria tablets. But are you paying more than you need to?
A reader from York tells me how she took her gap-year son to get his jabs before a trip to Brazil. As he was planning to travel through rural areas, he needed various shots, including typhoid, hepatitis A, yellow fever and rabies. “We were in a hurry, so we went to a private clinic. At the end of the appointment, I was handed a bill for more than £250. The anti-malaria tablets alone cost £25 for a 50-tablet box,” she says.
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Horror as hospital patient shoots himself dead on packed general ward – Daily Mail 21st October 2008
A cancer patient shot himself dead on a busy hospital ward yesterday.
The 63-year-old drew the curtain around his bed before firing a single shot with a handgun.
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What your winter cough could be trying to tell you… – Daily Mail 21st October 2008
t’s the time of year we all start getting coughs. Most clear up within a few days, but if yours doesn’t, it could be the sign of something more serious…
While most coughs clear up within days, around 20 per cent become chronic and some can persist for years. It’s important that any cough that has lasted for more than eight weeks is checked out by your GP.
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Hurrah! I can see my toes for the first time in years – Daily Mail 21st October 2008
Bruce Byron is desperate to lose weight. The actor, best known as DC Terry Perkins in The Bill, is married to TV psychologist Dr Tanya Byron.
He writes about his battle with the bulge fortnightly in Good Health.
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I’ve got a tiny satellite dish behind my ear to help me hear – Daily Mail 21st October 2008
Every year, around 10,000 Britons go deaf in one ear as a result of nerve damage. Conventional hearing aids, which amplify sound, cannot help. Christopher Burn, 61, a parking enforcement officer from Gateshead, underwent a new procedure, as he tells Thea Jordan.
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Teenager Sam Holt’s behaviour would leave most parents in despair – drinking, smoking, taking drugs and having sex.
But the 13-year-old’s mother thinks it is ’sweet’ rather than shocking.
Tracy Holt even rewards her daughter with cigarettes on the rare occasions when she does behave.
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As a Bond girl, she became an iconic beauty. But as Ursula Andress reveals for the first time, she’s now ravaged by osteoporosis which could leave her crippled. What’s more, she admits it’s all her own fault…
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I had a bad case of shingles five years ago and have been left with bouts of severe pain which follow the trail of the shingles. The pain is not continuous, but strikes suddenly. Do you know what this is or what causes it, and how is it best to deal with the pain?
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Could this pill cure the agony of severe period pains? – Daily Mail 20th October 2008
A new pill could end the misery of painful periods. Unlike many existing treatments, which tackle the symptoms, it is designed to work on a possible cause.
Period pains, also known as dysmenorrhoea, are cramping abdominal pains experienced just before or during a woman’s monthly period.
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Jane Clarke: Why I’m wild about game – Daily Mail 20th October 2008
Every Tuesday, Britain’s leading nutritionist explains how to eat your way to health. This week Jane explains why, even those of us counting the pennies at the weekly shop, could do worse than think about game…
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How good is your surgeon — are you more likely to die in one hospital than another? These are the questions raised in a new book by Dr Phil Hammond, who 20 years ago helped expose the Bristol children’s heart scandal. Here, he argues that patients are still being exposed to unnecessary risk because of a lack of proper safety standards.
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A delighted mother is celebrating this week after her miracle triplets battled to reach their milestone first birthday.
Beverley Cunningham, 41, defied the odds last year after she suffered a devastating miscarriage only for a scan to reveal she’d actually been carrying quads and still had three healthy babies.
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Backing for physio self-referral – BBC Health News 21st October 2008
Patients in England should soon be able to bypass GPs and self-refer to physios and a host of other health staff, after ministers gave the plan their backing.
The Department of Health is to call on NHS chiefs to allow people to go straight to dieticians, podiatrists and speech therapists as well as physios.
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Mersey women use Botox to cure stilletto pains – Liverpool Daily Post 19th October 2008
Doctors are using Botox injections to cure a new condition known as “stilettotarsal” – caused by years of tottering around in high heels.
The injury causes pain in the soft tissue on the ball of the foot, or metatarsal region, forcing fashionistas to wear flat footwear.
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Blood test for vCJD ‘unrealistic’ – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
Screening donated blood for vCJD is unrealistic and would scare away donors, government advisors say.
Tests for vCJD could be available in 18 months, but all carry a small risk of incorrectly identifying the disease in people who are not actually infected.
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Doctors get death diagnosis tips – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
Doctors are being given tips to help them diagnose when someone is dead.
Although a patient coming back from the dead is rare, there is enough ambiguity in diagnosing death that doctors need guidance, experts have decided.
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Scouts to be prepared about sex – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
The Scout Association is to start offering its members sexual health and relationships advice.
New guidance, geared mainly to 14 to 18-year-olds, advises leaders to discuss contraception and encourage resisting of peer pressure to have sex.
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UK poorest ‘living shorter lives’- BBC Health News 20th October 2008
Britons who live in affluent areas live up to 14 years longer than those in poorer ones, research has suggested.
The average age of death varied between 66 in Easterhouse, Glasgow, and 80 in Eastbourne, Sussex, the Universities of Bristol and Sheffield found.
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UK Asians hunt for bone marrow donors – BBC Health News 20th October 2008
Dean Sheik was born with a rare blood disease and his only option is a bone marrow transplant.
Without this operation Dean, who is seven, could die within the next few years – but his chances of finding a donor in the United Kingdom are slim.
Posted by: western4uk | October 21, 2008
UK Health News 10/21/2008
Posted in Mass Media
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