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Health Care

What terrors, eh?

Europe’s growing obesity crisis will see almost three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women in the UK being overweight in 15 years, health experts have said.

Yes, that is just “overweight” there. BMI of more than 25.

So, err,

Women in the UK are more than twice as likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth as those in Poland, Austria or Belarus, according to Save the Children.

We’ve proven that natural childbirth, as the midwives tend to insist upon, is a good idea then have we?

You what?

Organic milk is less healthy than regular milk and could cause unborn babies to have lower IQs, a study suggests.

Compared with conventionally-produced milk, organic milk contains around one third less iodine which is essential for maintaining a strong metabolism.

Pregnant women who switch to organic thinking it will be healthier may also be putting the brain development of their unborn child at risk, experts have warned.

Iodine is known to be important for the healthy brain development of babies, especially in the early stages of pregnancy.

Previous research has shown that mothers-to-be who are iodine deficient during this critical time can give birth to children with reduced IQs.

Milk is the primary source of iodine in the UK diet and researchers from the University of Reading said the finding could have potentially serious health implications.

The danger of iodine lack, sure. Goitre in the woman and cretinism in the child. But where’s this milk thing come from? I thought we all got our iodine through our salt?

Or can’t they say that because salt is the very devil and we’re supposed to cut our intake?

Well, yes, but….

The first legally approved HIV self testing kit has gone sale in the UK.

The BioSURE HIV Self Test will enable people to test themselves when and where they like, with a 99.7 per cent accuracy rate.

Don’t we want to know both the false positive and false negative rates?

These people are mad, quite mad

British organic farmers are being forced to treat their livestock with homeopathic remedies under new European Commission rules branded ‘scientifically illiterate’ by vets.

The directive states that: “it is a general requirement…for production of all organic livestock that (herbal) and homeopathic products… shall be used in preference to chemically-synthesised allopathic veterinary treatment or antibiotics.”

Seriously, when do we get to kill them all?

To serve the public, eh?

Almost all GPs do not want their own practice to open seven days a week, a poll of 15,000 doctors has found.

Plans for 7 day access to GPs are the key Conservative manifesto health pledge, along with improved hospital services at weekends.

But the British Medical Association (BMA) survey found that 94 per cent of family doctors do not want their own surgery to offer seven day opening.

Can you say producer capture?

Well, no, not really

More than 6,000 people in Wales who would benefit from palliative care are not getting it, according to a report.

The study by the London School of Economics (LSE) said the UK’s care system for patients with terminal illnesses needed a major overhaul.

Err, NHS Wales is a different organisation than NHS England. Run much more by the government and with much less private contracting. A finding about NHS Wales does not extend to NHS England therefore.

Timmy elsewhere

At the ASI:

Just a small note. There’s a letter in The Guardian insisting that the NHS should not be privatised in any form or manner. Hey, you know, election season. There’s some 100 or more signatories to it. Of whom 46 are listed as being GPs.

Yes, General Practitioner. That part of the NHS which has always been privately owned, run and managed, as contractors to the larger organisation.

46% of those shouting that there should not be private sector contracting to the NHS are themselves private sector contractors to the NHS.

Well, yes

Macmillan said the figures showed that much better survival rates were achievable in the UK.

Its chief executive, Lynda Thomas, said: “Because UK cancer survival rates are lagging so far behind the rest of Europe, people are dying needlessly. Frankly, this is shameful. If countries like Sweden, France, Finland and Austria can achieve these rates, then the UK can and should, bridge the gap.”


There is, as always
, the problem with such figures. What is the influence of early detection? However, leaving that aside, what do the countries with better survival rates have in common? Rather more market in their health care systems than we do.

Ho hum.

Well, he is!

A man from Wales was charged £1,775 for treatment in an English hospital – because he was a “foreigner”.

Nicholas White, 64, was shocked when the bill arrived after he was taken ill while visiting relatives in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, just before Christmas.

“I was told that because I was Welsh I counted as a foreigner and would therefore have to pay,” said Mr White, a retired teacher from Dyffryn Ardudwy, Gwynedd, Wales.

This is a pity though:

The NHS trust has now admitted that the bill should have gone direct to Mr White’s local NHS trust and not to him directly.

And this is fascinating:

He spent three days undergoing tests at the Hinchingbrooke Hospital and was released with suspected gallstones.

Several weeks later, Mr White was offered an appointment for a follow-up procedure in the form of a gastroscopy to investigate what was causing his pain.

Mr White approached his regular GP in Barmouth, who advised him to take the appointment because he might have to wait anything up to six months to have the procedure in Wales.

NHS England is more market based than NHS Wales. The marketisation of health care really is such a bad idea, isn’t it?

The best thing about being a doctor

No, the best thing about being a doctor in the NHS today is having insider knowledge. Knowing the weak points in the system. Being able to identify where systems break down and having the know how, ability and confidence to intervene. Being able to remedy problems in a timely manner, averting disaster or just gently steering the plan back on course is something I am eternally grateful I can do. Not just for me but also for my friends and family.

Is knowing how to navigate the entirely fucked up bureaucracy of the NHS.

As an argument for wholesale reform it’s hard to beat, isn’t it?

Oooops!

The NHS England review, led by an independent expert, will review UK and international evidence about different models of maternity care, including ‘midwife-led units’ like that run at Furness General Hospital.

Hmmm.

It tells how a group of midwives – who dubbed themselves “the Musketeers,” taking a “one for all” approach – “distorted the truth” colluding to hide the truth from bereaved parents, and inquests into the baby deaths.

Sisters are colluding with themselves?

They’ve had 67 years to sort this out

Patients are suffering shameful safety risks and higher death rates because the NHS is failing to provide proper care at weekends, a damning report will warn this week.

Health officials say patients are being left to feel “neglected and unsafe” in understaffed hospitals, and forced to endure long waits for tests and treatment because basic services are not available on Saturdays and Sundays.

A damning submission to the NHS Pay Review Body tells how the most vulnerable hospital patients are being exposed to major risks at weekends.

Cases cited by officials include one in which the parents of a mentally-ill patient on “suicide watch” were told they were in charge of her safety until NHS services resumed on Monday.

All a bit odd really, don’t you think? That an organisation with a 24/7 demand still works 9-5 5/7?

Couldn’t be because it is producer led rather than consumer responsive or anything, could it?

Cretin Alert!

From April, all Scottish health boards (bar one, NHS Lothian) will ban the use of e-cigarettes on NHS premises. The move makes perfect sense, and falls firmly into line with current NHS policies relating to other nicotine-laden items.

Gross, idiot, stupidity.

By banning both cigarettes and e-cigarettes from hospital grounds, they claim, NHS boards are removing a critical incentive for nicotine addicts to switch over to “less harmful” e-cigs. But should we really be encouraging smokers to make that switch?

Yes.

One of the most dangerous aspects of your typical, run-of-the-mill cigarette is the tar-filled smoke you’re inhaling with each puff. That tar may contain up to 7,000 different toxins, which are otherwise found in everything from rat poison to nail polish. E-cigs, on the other hand, produce a light, tar-free vapour. But this doesn’t necessarily make them any safer.

Complete, total, utter, cuntery.

No matter how you choose to dress it up, nicotine is nicotine, and public health is public health. Let’s not confuse the two.

Hang the bastard.

Happily, the comments section seems to agree with me.

Well done Zoe!

So, the obesity epidemic.

It’s inequality, because poor kids get fat, it’s corporate greed, because sugar is added to our food to make extra profits, or we’re all being poisoned by pollution, or the proles are just lazy.

In ZoeWorld those are the only possible alternatives.

The reality, that calories consumption (even sugar consumption) is falling and has been for decades, just not as fast as calorie exertion, doesn’t manage to enter the discussion.

Isn’t the world getting better?

More than half of adults are now expected to get cancer at some point in their life, research shows.

The risk is increasing so quickly that experts fear as many as two-thirds of today’s children will develop the disease.

We’re not dying of the other things on this list.

Just as an example, smallpox used to kill 20 million a year globally. So we could say that the eradication of smallpox has led to 10 million people a year getting cancer.

Sounds like a bargain to me.

HaHaHaHa….this is gorgeous!

NHS 111 is to blame for almost all of the last year’s rise in Accident & Emergency admissions, one of the country’s most senior medics has said.

Dr Cliff Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said it was “absurd” to suggest patients were wrong to go to casualty units, when large numbers were being directed there by the telephone service.

Speaking at a session of the Commons health select committee on Wednesday, he said the NHS needed to change its systems so they work better for patients.

He told MPs that the 111 phoneline, which was supposed to help patients and relieve pressures on hospitals has had the opposite effect.

“The reason these people are attending these emergency departments is because we told them to,” he said.

“Of the 450,000 extra attendances in the system in the last year, 220,000 were advised by NHS 111 to come to the emergency department and another 220,000 had an ambulance despatched to them by NHS 111.

“If you put those figures together you have more than 95 per cent of the rise in type 1 [major A&E unit] attendances. I don’t think we should blame people for attending the emergency department when we’ve told them to go there. It’s absurd.”

Earlier this month, emergency medicine experts said that when nurses handled calls on the helpline’s predecessor, NHS Direct, they had the experience to know when an A&E visit was not appropriate.

It came as figures emerged showing that NHS 111 sends an extra 50 per cent more patients to A&E at the weekend, when GP surgeries and other clinics are shut – increasing the strain on already stretched hospitals.

The general idiocy of politicians planning a health care system, eh?

Genuine question here

Professor Mike Richards, CQC chief inspector of hospitals signalled that the inspections findings were among the worst it has ever published, with the trust being the first ever to have been branded “inadequate” for caring.


Is this report
(or grade given in the report perhaps) better or worse than whatever was given to Mid Staffs?

If so, or either way, why?

Circle and Hinchingbrooke

The healthcare company Circle is in talks to pull out of its contract to manage Britain’s first privately run NHS hospital, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, as it blamed funding cuts and a surge in demand for accident and emergency services.

Circle Holdings said funding for Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust was cut by about 10% for the current financial year and the company had spent £4.84m to support the trust. Circle is allowed to withdraw from the contract if it spends more than £5m.

The company said conditions had got worse in recent weeks and that its franchise to operate the trust was not sustainable.


Private company fails
.

Great, that’s the point of the market. That failure is possible, that it happens. In fact, it’s the most important part of said market system: that things that don’t work get ditched.

Shrug. This of course means we want to have more such contracts let out to see if anyone can come up with a better way of doing it.