Category Archives: Health

Opposition criticises super proposal – as it happened

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‘Really clear’ wages are not driving inflation, Tony Burke says

Circling back to the interview with employment relations minister, Tony Burke. He’s asked about soaring corporate profits, which were up more than 10% in the December quarter compared to wages which rose 2.6%, and whether that demonstrates that it’s corporate profits driving inflation – as the union movement is arguing – not wages.

It is really clear that wages are not driving inflation, are not the principal driver of inflation here. It’s really clear we don’t have some sort of spiral of inflation being caused by high wage growth. It’s also really clear we don’t have high wage growth.

I was pleased that the last wage price increase got up to 3.3%. To the extent that that’s the highest it’s been for some time and had we not taken actions that we took last year, particularly with respect to the minimum wage and awards, you wouldn’t have got to figure as high as but it’s still much, much lower than inflation.

Supermax prisoners are served better food than the workers building Snowy Hydro 2.0.

You have workers living, literally locked up in a camp with limited recreational facilities in the middle of nowhere, being fed maggot-infested food.

The problem is the joint venture who was awarded the contract is pinching every penny they can to try and improve their profit margin.

The whole site’s a tragedy waiting to happen.

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Donor children could contact biological parents before 18 under new proposals

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Existing UK fertility law should be updated to regulate modern treatments, says HFEA

Children born via sperm or egg donation would not need to wait until adulthood to find out more about their biological parents, under proposed changes to the law in the UK.

At present, donor-conceived children cannot obtain information about their biological parents until they are 18. But the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) said the law should be updated so this information can be made available after the birth of a child, should the donor choose.

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Japanese encephalitis may have infected one in 30 people in parts of northern Victoria

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Health department has expanded vaccine eligibility after a survey indicated the virus was more widespread than previously reported

Japanese encephalitis has infected as many as one in 30 people in parts of northern Victoria, the state’s health department has said, as it opened vaccine eligibility to more local government areas.

The department estimated the number in affected northern Victorian council areas, which was higher than previously thought, after a serosurvey indicated a greater number of cases than the 13 reported during last year’s mosquito season.

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Ambulance call handlers in England tell of anguish over death risk to patients

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Dispatchers tell investigation it is common to worry: ‘How many people are we going to kill today?’

Ambulance call handlers suffer anxiety about how many people will die before they can get help to them each day, researchers looking into the welfare of NHS staff have found.

Officials from the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) in England asked staff working in urgent and emergency care, including in A&E, NHS 111 call handling centres and ambulance services, for their experiences as part of wider research into NHS care.

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Veterans paying for service-related healthcare as Australian GPs stop accepting rebate

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Lack of timely and affordable medical care is exacerbating chronic health issues and causing mental distress among veterans, advocate says

Veterans are being left to pay for their own healthcare for service-related injuries and conditions as some GP clinics are no longer accepting the veteran white card.

The clinics argue the rebates are not high enough to cover the cost of services, but not getting timely and affordable medical care is exacerbating the chronic health issues of veterans and is causing mental distress, according to one advocate.

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Do you know more? Email melissa.davey@theguardian.com

Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636

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Gambling help services frustrated their ads are being blocked online but wagering ads given green light

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Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation says services barred on Google amid rise in wagering adverts and Sportsbet’s partnership with TikTok

Gambling harm services have expressed frustration about their adverts for rehabilitation being automatically blocked online, amid an increase in wagering advertising and Sportsbet’s partnership with TikTok.

Adverts that mention gambling are sometimes automatically blocked by social media companies or search engines to comply with their own advertising rules or government regulations. This is usually done by a combination of algorithms that block certain words as well as human oversight.

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Queensland becomes first Australian state to introduce pill testing in move away from ‘1950s drug policy’

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Health minister Yvette D’Ath says state will introduce pill testing at mobile and fixed sites following success of trials in Canberra

Queensland will become the first Australian state to roll out pill-testing sites in an attempt to curb the harmful effects of illicit drugs.

The move will shift the country more in line with global standards on harm minimisation, one advocate says.

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WHO says avian flu cases in humans ‘worrying’ after girl’s death in Cambodia

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Child died and father tested positive for H5N1, prompting fears of possible person-to-person transmission

The discovery of two cases of bird flu within the same family in Cambodia has highlighted the concern over potential human-to-human spread of the virus, although experts have stressed the risk remains low.

On Thursday, Cambodian authorities reported an 11-year-old girl from Prey Veng province had died from H5N1, with subsequent testing of 12 of her contacts revealing that her father also had the virus.

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Indigenous prisoner spent less than an hour in medical unit after emergency, Victorian coroner told

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Inquest hears Michael Suckling struggled with drug addiction, back pain, mobility issues and significant weight gain in prison

A First Nations man who died in a Melbourne prison was the subject of a “code black” medical emergency two days earlier, but spent less than an hour in a healthcare unit before being returned to his cell, an inquest has heard.

Michael Suckling, 41, died on 7 March 2021 at Ravenhall Correctional Centre in Melbourne’s west from an enlarged heart.

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Perth hospital missed signs seven-year-old was dying from sepsis due to ‘inadequate’ staffing, coroner finds

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Aishwarya Aswath died on Easter Saturday 2021, hours after presenting to an emergency department with a fever and unusually cold hands

Perth hospital staff missed the signs a seven-year-old girl was dying of sepsis because of the pressures caused by “inadequate” staffing, a coroner has found.

Aishwarya Aswath died on Easter Saturday 2021, hours after presenting to the Perth Children’s Hospital emergency department with a fever and unusually cold hands.

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Car pollution kills more Australians than crashes, new research finds

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The University of Melbourne study estimated that 11,105 people die prematurely from transport emissions, many more than past figures

Pollution from motor vehicles could be killing thousands more people than road accidents, with new research finding more than 11,000 Australians die prematurely every year from transport emissions.

The study from the University of Melbourne also found vehicle pollution could be putting more than 19,000 people in hospital for heart and lung issues, and causing asthma cases to spike by 66,000 each year.

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Medibank records profit rise despite data breach – as it happened

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Husic refuses to comment on crossbench negotiations over coal and gas

Moving on from science and industry, Ed Husic is asked if the approval for Santos to expand its Queensland gas field has killed off the government’s negotiations with the Greens over the national reconstruction fund (which Husic has carriage of) and safeguards (where there is a little crossover with Husic, because of manufacturing).

I’m very grateful for their engagement, all the engagement from the crossbenchers, and I’ve sought to make myself as available as I possibly can to work through issues some stuff we agree on some stuff we don’t I would love to go into the ins and outs of it, but I’d rather private negotiations sort themselves out because they will obviously be made public very soon and people that rightly expect that to happen.

But, you know, I am grateful that some of those points that are raised because from our point of view, and I think you heard in the PM’s speech yesterday – we take a view as a government that we’re not the holders of all knowledge, that we do accept, accept and expect people to provide their input so that we can build a better outcome.

I think what we’ve tried to do as a government is say we’re going to make decisions in the way that they’re supposed to.

We don’t want decisions to be politicised. We want them to be done a national interest and there’ll be pathways to making decisions that will be quite separate. So the big thing coming to your question, the answer I would, I would give you is they’re separate things.

I want them [the public] to answer that question.

I want them to guide us in the way in which we shape research priorities into the future. The last time that we actually updated these national science and research priorities was in 2015, back when Malcolm Turnbull took over as prime minister, a lot has happened since then.

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Sunak suggests MPs will vote on proposed NI protocol deal and accuses Starmer of wanting to ‘surrender’ to EU – UK politics live

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Latest updates: PM says Commons will be given a chance to ‘express its view’ on any final deal

British Steel has announced the closure of the coking ovens at its Scunthorpe works with the loss of 260 jobs, my colleague Jasper Jolly reports.

Graeme Wearden has reaction to this on his business live blog.

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Dementia now causes greatest burden of illness, injury and premature death in older Australians

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Condition overtakes coronary heart disease with 62% rise in number of healthy years lost since 2011, report finds, causing significant impact on carers and families

Dementia has now overtaken coronary heart disease as causing the greatest burden of illness, injury and premature death in older Australians, according to a report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

Among people aged 65 years and older, dementia was responsible for almost 230,000 years of healthy life lost – a figure that has increased 62% since 2011, the report found.

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Labor MP calls on government to widen Covid anti-viral eligibility in Australia

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Exclusive: Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah says strategy is letting Australians down but medical groups back regulatory approach

A Labor MP and doctor says the nation’s strategy on responding to Covid infections is “letting Australians down” and is calling for an overhaul oof eligibility for powerful anti-viral drugs to allow far greater access for more people.

Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah said she had paid more than $1,100 from her own pocket this week on a private script for Covid anti-virals for a sick family member who was not eligible for subsidised access to the drugs. She called on her government to open the treatments to all people aged over 12, labelling the rules “daft”.

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Allowing Indigenous man early access to pension could have ‘enormous’ consequences, court hears

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Lawyer says the landmark case is about ‘correcting historical disadvantage’ embedded structurally in Aboriginal society

Allowing an Indigenous Australian man to access his aged pension early would lead to “enormous” consequences in other areas of the law, the federal court has heard.

The full federal court on Monday commenced hearings in a landmark case brought against the commonwealth by 65-year-old Wakka Wakka man, Uncle Dennis, who is seeking to access the pension three years early on the grounds that Indigenous Australians have a shorter average life expectancy than the non-Aboriginal population.

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Junior doctors in England to strike for 72 hours in March

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Ten of thousands to take part in industrial action in escalation of row between NHS staff and government

Hundreds of thousands of operations and medical appointments will be cancelled in England next month and progress in tackling the huge care backlog will be derailed as the NHS prepares to face the most widespread industrial action in its history.

Junior doctors are poised to join nurses and ambulance workers in mass continuous walkouts in March after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action.

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Shorter Indigenous life expectancy should mean lower pension age, court told

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Landmark case from Indigenous man seeking to access pension three years early hears Australia fails to account for age gap from ‘racial disadvantage’

First Nations Australians should be granted access to the pension at a younger age due to a gap in life expectancy “which is closely connected to race”, the federal court has heard.

The full federal court on Monday commenced hearings in a landmark case brought against the commonwealth by 65-year-old Indigenous man, Uncle Dennis, who is seeking to access the pension three years early.

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Australia news live: landmark report confirms wage theft by universities; treasurer calls for changes to super laws

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Staff underpaid more than $80m in past three years. Follow the day’s news live

Fresh push to ban ‘asbestos of the 2020s’

There’s a fresh push to ban engineered stone commonly used in kitchen benchtops and linked to an incurable lung disease likened to asbestosis, AAP reports.

Instead of planning a family, we’re planning my funeral. I used to install kitchen benches. People liked engineered stone because it was cheap. But the dust got into my lungs causing deadly, incurable silicosis.

That’s too high a price for anyone to pay. Nothing will save my life but if you join the campaign to stop the importation and manufacture of engineered stone, you can help save someone else’s. Please.

Australian workers like Kyle are dying because of engineered stone.

The companies flooding our markets with this cheap and nasty material know that, but to them profits are more important than people’s lives.

It is incredibly distressing … when we hear about these horrific murders and we have to do more to prevent [them from] happening.

I often say we have to start responding to the red flags before more blue police tape surrounds the family home.

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Revealed: NHS England chair fixed meeting for client of bank he advised

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David Prior helped arrange a meeting between NHSX and the private care company Teladoc, said to be keen to expand in the UK

The former Tory minister who chaired NHS England helped arrange a meeting for an American private health firm that paid millions of pounds to the investment bank that employed him.

David Prior emailed Matthew Gould, a senior NHS executive, in February 2021 asking him to “have a conversation” with Jason Gorevic, chief executive of Teladoc, a multibillion-pound virtual medicine firm.

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