Category Archives: Health

Lena Zavaroni: fame, anorexia and the tragedy of a 1970s child star

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Zavaroni was in the charts at 11 and died after years of illness aged 35. Her father talks about their family life as a new stage show about her is about to open

There are a few recordings of television interviews with Lena Zavaroni around online. One with Russell Harty where he comments that her eating disorder must save on restaurant bills and another when Terry Wogan tells her to eat up so she can get back to “your chunky self”.

The little girl with the big voice was 10 when she appeared on Opportunity Knocks – television’s predecessor to Britain’s Got Talent and Pop Idol – singing Ma! He’s Making Eyes at Me, 11 when it was a hit and 13 when she was diagnosed with anorexia, a barely known illness then called the “slimmer’s disease”. Before she died in 1999 the girl from Rothesay on the Scottish island of Bute had hosted her own TV shows, performed at the White House and shared a stage with Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. She remains the youngest artist ever to have a record in the Top 10 UK albums chart. Lena was huge.

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Will we get a single, variant-proof vaccine for Covid?

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The goal of a universal vaccine would have seemed a fantasy only a few years ago. But not now…

This week the government announced additional vaccine booster jabs for the over-75s and suggested a further shot is likely to be needed in the autumn. But imagine if the next Covid vaccine jab you have were the last you would ever need. That’s a dream being actively pursued now by researchers, who feel it could be possible to make a “universal” vaccine against the Sars-CoV-2 virus that would work well not only against all existing variants but any that the virus could plausibly mutate into in the future.

Some are thinking even bigger. In January, Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, and two other experts called for more research into “universal coronavirus vaccines” that would work not only against Sars-CoV-2 but against the many other coronaviruses in animal populations that have the potential to spill over into humans and cause future pandemics. “We need a research approach that can characterise the global ‘coronaviral universe’ in multiple species,” Fauci and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, “and apply this information in developing broadly protective ‘universal’ vaccines against all [coronaviruses].”

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Stressed NHS staff in England quit at record 400 a week, fuelling fears over care quality

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Burnout from two years of battling Covid pandemic has created flood of departures and public concern, says survey

A record number of more than 400 workers in England have left the NHS every week to restore their work-life balance over the last year, according to a new analysis of the workforce crisis hitting the health service.

The flood of departures comes with staff complaining of burnout and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder following two years of battling the Covid pandemic. There are now concerns that the exodus is impacting the quality of care, with more than a quarter of adults saying they or an immediate family member had received poor care as a result of the workforce problems.

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Vallance and Whitty to step out of spotlight as Covid restrictions end in England

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Chief scientific adviser and England’s chief medical officer will focus on health inequalities and emerging technologies

The government’s two most senior advisers in the pandemic will turn their attention to health inequalities, the state of the UK’s air and emerging technologies following the milestone decision to end all legal Covid restrictions in England this week.

While the pandemic is far from over, Boris Johnson’s announcement on Monday of the “living with Covid” plan is expected to be the last time Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, and Sir Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, will flank the prime minister to explain the UK’s response.

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UK government has abandoned its own Covid health advice, leak reveals

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Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak said to have agreed to decision not to follow public health advice on testing in vulnerable settings

Public health advice is no longer being followed under Boris Johnson’s “living with Covid” strategy to end mass testing, senior civil servants have acknowledged in a leaked account of a cross-Whitehall briefing.

The briefing by a senior member of the Covid taskforce was delivered to civil service leaders across Whitehall on Thursday afternoon, making clear that following public health advice was no longer the sole priority.

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Majority of US abortions in 2020 were medication abortions, analysis finds

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The increase came as telehealth and mailing medication during the pandemic made healthcare accessible for vulnerable people

Medication abortion accounted for the majority of all abortions for the first time in US history in 2020, a new analysis by the Guttmacher Institute has shown.

Sometimes called the “abortion pill”, medication abortion is a two-drug treatment that is approved to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks gestation or less. The drugs, sold under the brand name Mifeprex, have accounted for an increasingly large share of all abortions in the US since its introduction in 2000.

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France extends abortion limit after year of parliamentary rows

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Applause in national assembly as lawmakers vote to extend limit for ending pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks

France has extended its time limit for abortion after an epic battle in parliament, amid anger that thousands of women had to travel abroad each year to terminate pregnancies in countries such as the Netherlands, Spain or England because of French restrictions.

There was applause in the French national assembly on Wednesday when lawmakers voted definitively to extend the legal limit for ending a pregnancy from 12 to 14 weeks. France’s new time frame is still lower than in some other European countries, including England at 24 weeks.

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Increase funding or abandon hope of ending malaria, TB and Aids, UK warned

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Global Fund urges UK and other donors to pledge billions to get efforts to end diseases by 2030 ‘back on track’ after catastrophic impact of Covid

Britain is being urged to pledge billions of dollars to get the fight against malaria, tuberculosis and Aids “back on track” after efforts were ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The UK has historically been one of the main donors to the Global Fund, an international financing organisation aimed at ending the three deadly epidemics by 2030. Now it is warning that, unless donors make an unprecedented total funding pledge of $18bn (£13.25bn) this year, that goal will be missed.

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Australia news updates live: Morrison announces sanctions and travel bans for Russian individuals; 23 Covid deaths recorded

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Scott Morrison announces targeted sanctions and travel bans for Russian individuals after Cabinet committee discusses Australia’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine; Victoria records 17 Covid deaths, NSW records six. Follow all the day’s news live

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has called for a health-first approach to alcohol and other drug use.

This comes after reports of the Reason party’s Fiona Patten introducing a private member’s bill to institute a decriminalisation model in Victoria.

Instead of a punitive approach via the criminal justice system, Victorian police would instead issue a mandatory notice and referral to drug education or treatment to people possessing a drug of dependence or who are believed to have used a drug of dependence. Compliance with this process would result in no finding of guilt or criminal record.

It is similar to the Portuguese model introduced in 2001. Of the more than 32,000 drug arrests in Victoria in the year leading up to September 2021, 80% were for drug use or possession only rather than trafficking large drug quantities.

RACGP president Dr Karen Price said saving lives and reducing harm must always come first:

Alcohol and other drug use is, primarily, a health issue that should be managed by health professionals, including GPs.

Almost everyone knows someone who has been negatively affected by alcohol or other drug use in some form, it cuts across all demographics and all segments of society. So, if you declare a “war on drugs” you are declaring war on someone’s partner, family member, colleague, or friend – it just makes no sense.

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Children ‘breathe out fewer aerosols’, which may reduce Covid risk – study

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Primary-aged children produce about four times fewer particles than adults, which may help explain their lower transmission risk

Primary school-aged children produce about four times fewer aerosol particles when breathing, speaking or singing compared with adults, which could help explain why they seem to be at lower risk of spreading Covid.

Various studies have suggested that young children are about half as susceptible to catching Covid as adults, and, despite carrying a similar amount of virus in their noses and throats, appear to pass it to fewer people if they do become infected.

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‘Aggressive’ marketing of formula milk flouts code, warns WHO as it urges curbs

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‘Misleading’ messages from $55bn-a-year industry are ‘unethical’, says report, which calls for plain packaging rules similar to tobacco

Countries should clamp down on the “aggressive” and “unethical” marketing of formula milk for babies, including forcing companies to sell products in plain packaging, a report by the World Health Organization and Unicef has said.

In research, commissioned 41 years after the global health community drew up guidelines aimed at regulating the industry, experts found that the marketing of formula had “no limits” and had become more “unregulated and invasive” in the digital age.

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This Is Going to Hurt’s Ambika Mod: ‘Whenever I did a caesarean I was buzzing!’

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Playing junior doctor Shruti is a far cry from the standup’s ‘really silly’ sketch comedy but her improv background helped her find moments of levity in Adam Kay’s NHS drama

When Ambika Mod was cast in This Is Going to Hurt, Adam Kay’s TV adaptation of his diaries as a junior NHS doctor, it was late 2020 and health workers were facing a new Covid wave. “It felt like, now more than ever, it was an important story to tell,” she says. “I was filled with fear because of the sheer responsibility.”

Mod plays Shruti Acharya, a junior doctor under the tutelage of Adam (played by Ben Whishaw). “It’s so rare to see a well-written, complex, young south Asian female character,” she says. “Her arc is so brilliant.” The character is an amalgamation of people Kay worked with. “I share a lot in common with Shruti,” says Mod. “We’re both young Indian women, we’re both children of immigrants, so Adam was really receptive to my thoughts. I remember him saying: ‘If Shruti doesn’t make sense to you, she’s not going to make sense to anyone.’”

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Australia news live updates: Queensland and Victoria to lift mask rules as nation records 33 Covid deaths

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Clive Palmer cancels press club appearance; foreign minister condemns Russia’s declaration of Ukranian separatist independence as PM says Russia should ‘step back’; defence responds to China’s claim about laser incident; NSW and Victoria both record 14 Covid deaths, Queensland records five; mask rules lifted in Victoria from midnight Saturday and in Queensland next week. Follow the latest updates live

Jumping back to the Sydney train situation for a moment and the Rail, Tram and Bus Union state secretary, Alex Claassens, is discussing the return of limited train services with ABC News Breakfast:

Apparently, where we ended up late last night was we negotiated an outcome where trains will run today. We finally managed to get the management team to see some common sense and today they will be operating a service roughly around the half-hour to 15-minute mark.

They will then try and improve on that during the day. We will work together as much as we can to try to get as many trains on the tracks as we can, and you can imagine our disappointment yesterday morning when we got up like everybody else in Sydney to realise some genius had made a decision to cancel all of our train services.

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Tory row over testing casts shadow over PM’s Covid announcement

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Analysis: cabinet colleagues horrified over wrangling between Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid

Cabinet ministers were already waiting in No 10 on Monday morning when it became clear the sign-off for the prime minister’s much-anticipated end to Covid regulations was not going to be as perfunctory as they had imagined.

A festering row between Rishi Sunak’s Treasury and Sajid Javid’s health department was responsible, first reported by the Guardian last week and still unresolved.

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Germany hopes protein-based Covid vaccine will sway sceptics

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About 1.4m doses of Nuvaxovid to arrive in country this week, after EU approval in December

Germany will offer its population a new protein-based Covid-19 vaccine comparable to conventional flu jabs this week, in the hope of swaying a sizeable minority that remains sceptical of the novel mRNA technology used in the most commonly used vaccines.

About 1.4m doses of the Nuvaxovid vaccine developed by the US biotech company Novavax are to arrive in Germany this week, the country’s health minister, Karl Lauterbach, confirmed last Friday. A further million doses are to arrive the week after, with the German government’s total order for the year 2022 amounting to 34m doses.

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Australia news live updates: Perrottet urged to work with union over NSW train dispute; international border reopens; 17 Covid deaths

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Perrottet urged to work with union over NSW train dispute; Peter Dutton says all signs on Ukraine ‘pointing in one direction’; at least 17 Covid-related deaths; Australia’s international border reopen for the first time in nearly two years. Follow the latest updates live

AGL Energy has rejected a takeover bid by tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes and Canadian asset management giant Brookfield, saying the preliminary offer “materially undervalues the company”.

Brookfield and Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures made the extraordinary offer to take over Australia’s most polluting company on Saturday, with a goal to shut its coal power plants earlier than planned.

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‘Quite dangerous’: Australia’s slowing Covid booster rollout worries doctors

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Some are shunning their third vaccine dose, prompting fears of ‘a double whammy – Covid and flu’ this winter

The messaging around the severity of the Omicron Covid variant and a degree of pandemic fatigue is slowing Australia’s booster rollout, as some Australians shun the third dose.

Clinton, who asked for his last name not to be used, is pro-vaccine – he got his first two doses as soon as he could, choosing AstraZeneca because it was slightly more effective.

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‘We’re in a different world’: PM defends end of Covid rules in England

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Boris Johnson indicates last restrictions could be eased from next week and free testing will end soon

The country is “in a different world” from when the Covid pandemic started, Boris Johnson has said, meaning the last remaining restrictions can begin to be lifted from next week.

Ahead of an announcement on Monday about the government’s “living with Covid” strategy, the prime minister signalled free mass testing would end imminently and told people to return to the office and “get their confidence back”.

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How Covid changed medicine for the future

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The global pandemic sparked a huge superhuman effort to control coronavirus. But the billions spent have also had an unexpected impact on medicine and science

When Tom Pooley, 21, became the first person to receive an experimental vaccine against plague as part of a medical trial last summer after tests on mice, he was inspired by the thought that his involvement could help to rid the world of one of the most brutal killers in human history.

“They made it quite clear I was the first human to receive it,” says Pooley, a radiotherapy engineering student. “They didn’t dress it up, but they made it clear it was as safe as possible. There are risks, but they are talented people: it’s a big honour to be the first.” The single-shot, based on the Chadox technology developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group and AstraZeneca, took less than five seconds to painlessly administer, he says. That night, he felt a little unwell, but he was fine within three hours; and the small trial continued apace to combat the centuries-old bacteria threat, which killed 171 in Madagascar as recently as 2017. It uses a weakened, genetically altered version of a common-cold virus from chimpanzees.

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