Category Archives: Health

ADHD prescriptions in England have risen by 18% each year since pandemic

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Research has found that the number of ADHD prescriptions in England increased from around 25 per 1,000 people in 2019/20 to 41.55 in 2023/24

The number of prescriptions being issued in England for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication has risen by 18% year on year since the pandemic, with the biggest rise being seen in London, according to research.

Experts said increased public awareness via social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok could be a factor behind the substantial rise in prescription rates, encouraging “more people to seek assessment, diagnosis and treatment”.

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Dutton says Labor claims ‘utter nonsense’; multimillionaire faces new child abuse material charges – as it happened

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Good morning blog readers – this is Rafqa Touma, and I’ll be taking you through the day’s live news updates. Thank you to Martin Farrer for getting us rolling this morning.

More than 125,000 properties are in the dark as crews work to restore power across QLD and NSW in Alfred’s aftermath.

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RFK Jr directs FDA to revise ‘self-affirm’ rule to improve food ingredient safety

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Health secretary accuses food companies of ‘exploiting loophole’ over food safety and urges greater transparency

The US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has directed the Food and Drug Administration to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision that allows companies to self-affirm that food ingredients are safe.

The move would increase transparency for consumers as well as the FDA’s oversight of food ingredients considered to be safe, Kennedy said on Monday.

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Covid, five years on: UK ‘still not ready to protect the population’

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Scientific triumphs were made in the battle against the pandemic, but the memories and lessons are already in danger of being lost

On 9 March 2020, Martin Landray was studying the likely impact of Covid-19 as it started to sweep Britain. What was needed, he realised, was a method for pinpointing cheap, effective drugs that might limit the impact of the Sars-CoV-2 virus that was filling UK hospitals with ­dangerously ill patients.

Within 10 days, Landray – working with Oxford University colleague Peter Horby – had set up Recovery, a drug-testing programme that involved thousands of doctors and nurses working with tens of ­thousands of Covid-19 patients in UK hospitals.

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Mark Butler calls Australia’s private hospitals and insurers to urgent meeting amid Healthscope financial crisis

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Health minister convenes meeting after reports second-largest private hospital operator risks voluntary administration

The health minister, Mark Butler, has convened an urgent meeting with the chief executives of Australia’s private hospitals and health insurers amid warnings the second-largest private hospital operator, Healthscope, is facing a financial crisis.

The Australian Financial Review reported this week that Healthscope had retained insolvency experts KordaMentha to prepare a contingency plan in case it is placed into voluntary administration.

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Ministers delaying inquiry into treatment of migrant carers, RCN says

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Exclusive: Nursing union says it continues to receive complaints about low pay, unfit housing and illegal fees

Ministers are dragging their heels on an investigation into the mistreatment of migrant carers, the country’s largest nursing union has said, as it continues to receive complaints about low pay, substandard accommodation and illegal fees.

Nicola Ranger, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, has written to Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, to urge her to speed up her promised investigation into the abuse of foreign care workers.

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Australia news live: Victoria to tighten bail laws; man shot dead by police in Queensland

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The Victorian premier said she would be introducing legislation to' ‘bring about that change … very soon’. Follow today’s news live

Chalmers defends Australian defence spending as Trump administration says nation should spend more

Jim Chalmers has defended Australia’s defence spending as having already gone up “considerably”, amid suggestions from the Donald Trump administration that Australia should spend more.

That is a very, very substantial pick-up in defend spending and one of the reasons we’re doing that is to be able to work more effectively with our allies and partners like the United States … We do pay our own way on defence. We are substantially increasing defence spending.

We have got a good relationship with the Americans, particularly that economic relationship which is of mutual benefit, and these are the sorts of things that we have been talking about with our American counterparts as they finalise some of the policies on things like tariffs.

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‘Paradigm shift’: Australian researchers discover key to treatment of bacterial vaginosis

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Study shows that male partners can help in limiting recurrence of the condition afflicting almost one in three women

Like almost one in three women, Hanae has developed bacterial vaginosis (BV) – a condition when the normal healthy bacteria in the vagina are replaced by an overgrowth of other mixed bacteria.

When she got it for first time in 2021, she took the standard treatment of antibiotics, only for the condition to come back weeks later. “It came back time and time again, no matter how many times I got antibiotic treatment,” said Hanae, who lives in Melbourne.

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‘I was devastated’: MP hopes her story will help improve maternity care for disabled women

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Exclusive: Marie Tidball tells of her experiences with NHS as report finds 44% higher risk of stillbirth for disabled women

When doctors tried to work out whether Marie Tidball would need a specially designed birth plan, one asked her to lie fully clothed on the bed and spread her legs in the air so they could see how far they could open.

The incident was one of several occasions when Tidball, now a Labour MP, felt neglected during her pregnancy and early motherhood because of the NHS’s failure to adapt on account of her physical disabilities. Tidball has physical impairments affecting all four of her limbs and had major surgeries on both her hips and legs as a child.

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Crisafulli urges residents to prepare as storm approaches – as it happened

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This blog is now closed. Read the latest Cyclone Alfred news update here

Sandbag queues ‘about an hour’ in Brisbane – Wells

The federal sports minister, Anika Wells, also spoke on the Today Show this morning from Brisbane and said it was the “calm before the storm”.

At the moment that’s the shortest it’s been in 24 hours. It’s a big couple of days ahead for south-east Queensland. We’re more than up to the task, but everybody’s doing their bit.

So everyone’s doing their bit and we thank them for it.

We know that there’s going to be damaging winds, there is going to be powerful surf, coastal erosion, and it will be followed by significant rain that can last a couple of days. So we’re really urging people to be alert, to be prepared, just like the SES is.

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Communities warned to prepare as weather system takes right turn – as it happened

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Why should Australia trust president Donald Trump, given how he’s treated Ukraine’s president at the Oval Office? Richard Marles said the government’s focus was on supporting Ukraine:

That’s where Australia lies. That’s the decision that we have to make. And Ukraine can absolutely rely on Australia’s ongoing support in their defence, and we will work with international partners.

We’ve obviously worked with the United States over the last three years, and we’ll continue to do that, but we’ve worked with the United Kingdom, and we’ll continue to do that as well, and with European partners, and look at the best way in which we can provide support.

We have established a timeline with [the] Ukrainian government about the delivery of those tanks to Ukraine. Now, for operational reasons, won’t go into the detail of that timeline.

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Swab test could help UK women avoid invasive checks for womb cancer

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New method reported to cut number of false positives by 87% has been registered with regulator for approval

A new swab test could help hundreds of thousands of women a year in the UK who may have womb cancer avoid having an often painful invasive procedure to detect the disease.

About 800,000 women annually go to see a GP because they are suffering from abnormal bleeding from their uterus and then undergo uncomfortable and stressful investigations to identify the cause.

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Mental health crisis ‘means youth is no longer one of happiest times of life’

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UN-commissioned study in UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand finds satisfaction rises with age

For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts.

In a new paper commissioned by the UN, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.

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One in three NHS doctors so tired their ability to treat patients is affected, survey finds

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Exclusive: Medics more sleep deprived now than during Covid crisis amid staff shortages and surging demand

One in three doctors in the NHS are so tired that their ability to treat patients is impaired, according to a report that reveals medics are more sleep deprived now than during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Longer hours, staff shortages and soaring demand for care on top of the backlog that worsened during the Covid crisis are causing extreme tiredness among doctors, leading to memory blanks, problems concentrating and patient harm.

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Young adults increasingly struggling offline turn to ASMR videos, report finds

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Visceral videos of people playing with slime or braiding hair soothe those who feel overwhelmed by in-person contact

Younger adults are increasingly overwhelmed by in-person interaction and soothing themselves instead with sensory online content, according to a report on the wildly popular online content known as ASMR.

ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response – describes a particular sensory phenomenon that is triggered by specific sights or sounds, which usually begins with a tingling sensation across the scalp and results in feelings of deep calm and relaxation.

47% of those aged 25-34 said they felt overwhelmed in noisy or busy places such as shopping centres or train stations, compared with 35% of those aged 55-64.

39% of those aged 18-24 felt the need to shut out noise, for example using noise-cancelling headphones in public, compared with only 21% of those age 45-54.

Younger age groups were also more likely to prefer chatting to people online rather than face to face and to prefer to work alone rather than around other people.

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Sniffer dogs deployed as NSW pill-testing trial begins in Wollongong

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Attenders able to check what substances are in their illicit pills and powders at two-day Yours and Owls music festival

Festival goers using NSW’s first pill testing service won’t be subjected to sniffer dog searches but that doesn’t apply to people on their way to have their substances checked.

Authorities warned taking drugs remains illegal and police vowed to maintain a highly visible presence around the long-awaited trial site, insisting safety was the top priority.

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US shutdown of HIV/Aids funding ‘could lead to 500,000 deaths in South Africa’

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USAid cuts to clinics dispensing antiretroviral drugs will be ‘death sentence for mothers and children’, expert warns

Sweeping notices of termination of funding have been received by organisations working with HIV and Aids across Africa, with dire predictions of a huge rise in deaths as a result.

After the US announced a permanent end to funding for HIV projects, services across the board have been affected, say doctors and programme managers, from projects helping orphans and pregnant women to those reaching transgender individuals and sex workers.

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Australia news live: Conroy says Chinese flotilla under ‘unprecedented’ naval surveillance as it sails south of Adelaide

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Safety net for laid off fashion group workers

Workers out of a job after the collapse of fashion retailer Mosiac Group will be guaranteed their entitlements after the federal government fast-tracked access to its worker safety net scheme.

Staff are largely women, many balancing part-time employment with care responsibilities, and highly reliant on their pay, so we want to ensure they have as much certainty as possible around their finances going forward.

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Coroner warns about NHS physician associates after misdiagnosis and death of woman

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Pamela Marking, suffering severe stomach issues, diagnosed in hospital with nosebleed and sent home by PA

A coroner has issued a warning about the role of physician associates in NHS hospitals after a woman with severe abdominal problems was wrongly diagnosed as having a nosebleed and died four days later.

The family of Pamela Marking, 77, were under the mistaken impression she had been seen by a doctor when she was examined in an emergency department, rather than a physician associate (PA) with far less training.

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Mother had carer’s allowance stopped while with disabled daughter in hospital

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Rachel Adam-Smith says stopping benefits when loved ones are in hospital fails to recognise carers’ ongoing role

The mother of a severely disabled young woman was left in financial hardship after her carer’s allowance was wrongly stopped while her daughter was seriously ill in hospital.

Rachel Adam-Smith, 48, spent five weeks in hospital alongside her 22-year-old daughter who was being treated for severe gastrointestinal issues last month.

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