Category Archives: Health

There will be blood: women on the shocking truth about periods and perimenopause

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The menopause brings an end to menstruation – but in the lead-up, many women experience periods that can disrupt their lives and careers

If Emma Pickett needs to make a long journey, she checks her calendar very carefully. She will often take an emergency change of clothes when she goes out, and if giving a lecture for work, has to ensure it is no longer than half an hour. Yet she rarely hears anyone talk about the reason so many older women secretly go to all this trouble; why they’ve started to stick to black trousers, give up the sports they loved, or plan days out – especially with children – meticulously.

“If you have a bunch of 12-year-olds in the car, you can’t say: ‘Sorry chaps, I’m just bleeding heavily today,’” says Pickett, a 48-year-old breastfeeding counsellor and author of The Breast Book, who also happens to be among the one in five British women who suffer from heavy periods in the run-up to menopause (or perimenopause). “You can talk about hot flushes, make a joke about it. But because menstrual blood is gross in our society, there’s no conversation about it. There must be women round the world just pretending they need to dash off for some other reason.”

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English care homes could lose 70,000 staff over mandatory Covid jab

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Government estimates between 3% and 12% of staff may resist getting jab – meaning they will lose their jobs

Up to 70,000 care home staff in England could leave the workforce or lose their jobs because the government is insisting they must be vaccinated against Covid, with women and ethnic minorities disproportionately affected, according to an official estimate.

In an impact statement from the government, officials believe between 3% and 12% of care home staff may still resist getting a Covid jab by the end of a 16-week grace period. The central estimate was that 40,000 could be left without jobs, but it could be as high as 70,000 or as low as 17,000.

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Morrison offers microaggression and deflection, when all we want is an apology – and a solution | Katharine Murphy

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The ‘it’s not a race’ vaccine mantra has been discarded, but the prime minister is still running around in circles trying to evade responsibility

It was hard to keep up.

A reporter asked Scott Morrison on Wednesday whether he would consider urging the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (Atagi) to change its latest medical advice on AstraZeneca, opening the inoculation up to people aged 59 and under “given more than half of the population is in lockdown and the situation in Sydney is getting worse”.

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Death of 13-year-old girl sparks calls for action on FGM in Somalia

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Fartun Hassan Ahmed bled to death after undergoing female genital mutilation, a practice that 98% of women in the east African country undergo

A 13-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia, as activists report a rise in the practice during the pandemic.

Fartun Hassan Ahmed, the daughter of nomadic pastoralists, bled to death after being cut earlier this month in the village of Jeerinle in the state of Galmudug, her mother said.

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A moment that changed me: meeting the rescue dog who comforted me through unfathomable loss | Shirley Manson

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When I first held my dog Veela in my arms, I was grappling with my mother’s dementia, which was followed much too soon by her death. The teachings of my little red dog helped me survive

The first time I rescued an animal was almost 15 years ago, while I was on hiatus from my band, Garbage, in 2007. Shuffling around Los Angeles with little to occupy my time and my catastrophic imagination, my husband suggested we might consider adopting a rescue dog from one of the local shelters. I was a little hesitant at first. It struck me as a massive undertaking (I was not wrong) and I was unsure I had the emotional capacity to engage in the love of a small, defenceless, living thing.

My mother had just been diagnosed with Pick’s disease, a criminally aggressive form of dementia that can take a person, as it did my mother, out of the game in less than two years from the day of diagnosis. I was deeply disturbed by the course her disease was taking and finding it hard to connect with life in any joyful, meaningful way.

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‘Contraception divides opinion’: tackling taboos in Zimbabwe as teen pregnancies soar

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With Covid lockdowns blamed for rising rates, MPs and teachers say it’s time to ‘face reality’ and allow younger teens access to birth control

Malet*, 14, stands in the long queue at the maternity clinic in Harare. She is here for her routine checkup. Most of the people in the queue are teenage girls.

Malet fell pregnant the first time she had sex. Her baby is due in two months.

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Instagram ‘pushes weight-loss messages to teenagers’

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Researchers find minimal interactions by teen users can trigger a deluge of thin-body and dieting images

Instagram’s algorithms are pushing teenage girls who even briefly engage with fitness-related images towards a flood of weight-loss content, according to new research which aimed to recreate the experience of being a child on social networks.

Researchers adopting “mystery shopper” techniques set up a series of Instagram profiles mirroring real children and followed the same accounts as the volunteer teenagers. They then began liking a handful of posts to see how quickly the network’s algorithm pushed potentially damaging material into the site’s “explore” tab, which highlights material that the social network thinks a user might like.

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Nudge or nutcracker? Either way PM faces vaccine passport backlash

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Analysis: Latest Covid policy announced on what was supposed to be ‘freedom day’ likely to provoke huge anger

What was billed as “freedom day” has ended with accusations that the government has paved the way for exactly the opposite, as Boris Johnson braces for the backlash to his plans to introduce vaccine passports in a matter of months.

The documents have long been a fascination of the prime minister, who touted their use for pubs and theatres back at the start of 2021, but acknowledged the moral dilemma they posed in a country that has always prided itself on opposition to a European-style “papers, please” regime.

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UK children will not be offered Covid jab unless vulnerable

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Sajid Javid accepts JCVI advice that jab should only be offered to clinically at-risk children over age of 12

Children in the UK will get a Covid vaccine only if they are over 12 and extremely vulnerable, or live with someone at risk, as scientists raised concerns about inflammation around the heart linked to the Pfizer jab.

Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said he accepted the advice of scientific advisers that only children over 12 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down’s syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities should be allowed to get the Pfizer vaccine. Children over 12 who live in the same house as people who are immunosuppressed will also be eligible for jabs.

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I work in an NHS Covid ward – and I feel so angry

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It is hard not to feel undermined by rising cases and the decision to relax restrictions, says this consultant

It is hard to summarise exactly why I feel so angry. While the third wave is clearly under way, things are definitely different this time around. For the equivalent case numbers, hospitalisations are far lower, and people overall are less unwell. Vaccines have made the difference.

Many of our admissions have not been vaccinated, however. Some want to achieve “natural immunity”; it is unclear whether they realise that the only way to do this is to get the disease instead. Another wants “to see some real data”, as if all the information assessed by the regulatory authorities before approval, and the clear real-world data about the reduction in cases, is somehow fabricated. Someone’s friend got some side-effects from the vaccine so she didn’t have it; guess which one of them ended up in hospital. Most of these people have the decency to look sheepish, or to describe themselves as “one of those idiots”.

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Migration and Covid deaths depriving poorest nations of health workers

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Fragile health systems are at risk due to high numbers of medical staff leaving to work in richer countries, say experts

The loss of frontline health workers dying of Covid around the globe, is being compounded in the hospitals of developing nations by trained medical staff leaving to help in the pandemic effort abroad, according to experts.

With new Covid waves in Africa, and with Latin America and Asia facing unrelenting health emergencies, the number of health worker deaths from Covid-19 in May was at least 115,000, according to the World Health Organization. Its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, acknowledged data is “scant” and the true figure is likely to be far higher.

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Australia Covid live news update: NSW records fifth death from Sydney outbreak amid 98 new cases; Victoria extends lockdown after 13 new cases

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NSW reports 98 new local cases, with 24 patients now in intensive care, and says vaccinating children will be a ‘key’ part of rollout; Victorian coronavirus outbreak hits construction; 1m Pfizer vaccine doses arrive in Australia. Follow updates live

We are waiting on an update from South Australia now, but in the meantime, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has released an ad campaign to encourage people to get vaccinated. It features artists such as Tim Minchin, Rhonda Burchmore and performers from the Australian Ballet.

NSW Health has confirmed that the woman found dead in Green Valley was a confirmed Covid-19 case.

It said in a statement:

NSW Health today sadly reports the death of a woman in her 50s who was a confirmed Covid-19 case. She was a resident of south-western Sydney and a close contact of a Covid case.

This is the 61st death in NSW related to Covid-19 and the fifth of the current outbreak.

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Test and trace is still crucial to curbing Covid, but can it cope with ‘freedom’?

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The £37bn system is facing rapidly rising cases and waning compliance as social distancing rules are lifted in England

The £37bn test-and-trace system is described by the government as Britain’s “second line of defence” against Covid, behind the public health mantra of “Hands. Face. Space”. As England limps uncertainly into so-called freedom day on Monday, when rules around mask-wearing and social distancing will be relaxed, the programme becomes arguably even more crucial.

Related: What is the Covid workplace testing scheme Downing Street is part of?

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‘Important everybody sticks to rules’: Johnson explains U-turn on self-isolation – video

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The prime minister has said he briefly considered not isolating after coming into contact with the health secretary, who has contracted Covid-19 but thinks it is ‘far more important that everybody sticks to the same rules’. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak had initially tried to avoid isolation by saying they were part of a daily-test pilot scheme, prompting an outcry from members of the public and backbench Conservative MPs

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Masks, hugs and hand washing: 18 new rules for protecting yourself and others

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When should you open the windows, wear a mask and take a lateral flow test? As we enter the ‘personal responsibility’ era, here’s an expert guide

Freedom day is here, at least for those of us who live in England, and we’re back in the place nobody wants to be. On one hand: yay, freedom. On the other: an uneasy sense that the relaxation of restrictions has very little to do with the data, and very much more to do with a government that is bored of imposing Covid-related restrictions.

So we arrive on the unwanted (by me) territory of personal responsibility. Which freedoms should you grab with both hands, which should you foreswear for the time being, which should you exercise caution around? How should informed, polite, civic-minded and reasonable sorts conduct themselves? Expertise provided here is from Greg Fell, the director of public health in Sheffield; Prof Christina Pagel, the director of the clinical operational research unit at University College London, which applies advanced analytical methods to problems in healthcare; and Debora Robertson, the co-author of Manners: A Modern Field Guide.

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NSW Covid update: Gladys Berejiklian relaxes south-west Sydney rules on workers despite 105 new cases

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Premier widens who can leave Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool to include all authorised workers, as long as they get tested regularly

Plans to allow only emergency and health staff to leave three south-western Sydney areas at the centre of the city’s Covid-19 outbreak for work were shelved on Sunday, despite another day of more than 100 new cases.

New South Wales health authorities announced 105 new local cases on Sunday, with 27 of them out in the community while they were infectious.

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Australia Covid live update: Victoria records 16 new local cases; NSW tightens restrictions on south-west Sydney

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Residents of Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas barred from leaving for work as NSW tries to control spread of Delta variant. Follow the latest developments live

The NSW branches of the Transport Workers’ Union and the Australian Road Transport Industrial Organisation are welcoming an exemption for their workers in the three local government areas where only health and emergency workers are allowed to leave.

The groups say updated advice now includes a list of “authorised workers” permitted to go to work, “which includes freight, logistics, courier and delivery workers, bus drivers, waste workers and airport workers”.

The exemption will come as a relief to the more than 20,000 transport workers in south-west Sydney who yesterday believed they would not be able to go to work. We commend the NSW government for responding quickly to our calls for an exemption, however the advice to workers and operators is still far too sluggish.

Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce is asked about far-right media figure Katie Hopkins flying into Australia and going into hotel quarantine (maybe to appear on the local reality TV show Big Brother, as is the speculation).

I’m the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp’s dog, so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws. If you want to do that, pack your bongo and get out of country!

Related: Anger as Katie Hopkins posts video reportedly from Australian lockdown while thousands stranded overseas

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UK trial aims to find hidden lung damage caused by long Covid

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Study is part of £20m research drive that scientists hope will end stigma around the condition

A clinical trial has been launched to detect currently invisible lung damage in people with long Covid, as part of a £20m research drive that scientists hope will end stigma around the condition.

Patients still suffering breathlessness will be drawn from long Covid clinics in Sheffield, Manchester and Cardiff to undergo special scans using xenon gas to reveal damage that does not show up on conventional CT scans, leading to a mystery about why people are not getting better.

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Sajid Javid tests positive as health chiefs tell PM: don’t let Covid rip

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Boris Johnson may be forced to self-isolate after meeting health secretary, who confirms he has virus

Sajid Javid was self-isolating on Saturday after testing positive for Covid, as senior public health leaders from across the UK accused Boris Johnson today of “letting Covid rip” by relaxing legal restrictions.

The health secretary, who is fully vaccinated, said he had mild symptoms and confirmed the result of a lateral flow test with a positive PCR test. “I will continue to isolate and work from home,” he tweeted.

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Delays aggravate debate over Covid jabs for UK children

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Analysis: opinion is becoming sharply divided in the absence of official recommendations

The delay in deciding whether to vaccinate children over 12 against Covid is unlikely to help resolve what is already a contentious issue.

A survey by the Office for National Statistics has found that almost 90% of parents in England would favour giving their children a vaccine if offered, and school leaders have also backed jabs for pupils.

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