Category Archives: Health

More than 5.4m extra doctor visits were bulk billed last year after incentives boost, health minister says

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Increase follows Albanese government tripling financial rewards for GPs to bulk bill pensioners, concession card holders and children

More than 5.4m additional visits to the doctor were bulk billed in the last year due to a boost to incentives, according to figures released by the health minister, Mark Butler.

The proportion of all doctors’ visits that are bulk billed has increased by 1.7 points from 75.6% in October last year to 77.3% this October, the data shows.

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‘Will haunt me for life’: nurse suspended over Covid lockdown baby shower in Melbourne aged care home before deadly outbreak

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Father-to-be was unaware of planned party at Epping Gardens aged care facility and stayed only five minutes, tribunal hears

An aged care nurse who attended a baby shower at a nursing home during a Covid lockdown has been suspended, telling a tribunal the mistake “will haunt me for the rest of my life”.

Staff at the Epping Gardens aged care held a surprise baby shower in July 2020 for registered nurse Denis Baniqued and his wife, who also worked at the facility.

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Services for most-vulnerable people at risk after NICs rise, charities say

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Care providers, GPs and pharmacists warn increased costs will cause cuts and job losses

Services that support some of England’s most vulnerable people have warned that tax increases in the budget will lead to cuts and closures that could devastate the charity sector.

Although the NHS and councils are protected from the impact of the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) announced in Wednesday’s budget, charities that provide services say the increase means they will face “existential” financial pressures.

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UK supermarkets using multibuy deals to encourage sales of meat, study finds

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Exclusive: about one in five offers involve meat and dairy and one in ten processed meat despite known health risks

Supermarkets are using multibuy promotional deals to encourage shoppers to buy meat and processed meat, despite the products being linked to a heightened risk of cancer, research reveals.

Almost one in five (18%) of multibuy offers in major British supermarkets involve meat and dairy products, and one in ten (11%) processed meat such as ham, bacon and sausages.

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‘More toxic than ever’: Lahore and Delhi choked by smog as ‘pollution season’ begins

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As air pollution hits toxic levels, one proposal is to introduce a ‘smog diplomacy’ initiative between Pakistan and India

As the smog descended over Lahore, people began to feel the familiar symptoms. First came the scratchy throat and burning eyes, then the dizziness, tightness in the chest and the dry racking cough.

“It’s become a physical ordeal just to go outdoors,” said Jawaria, 28, a master’s student living in the Pakistani city.

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Housing, social care and universities: who lost out in the UK budget?

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Rachel Reeves made funding the NHS a priority but people working in other areas said they were disappointed

Rachel Reeves’s first budget emphasised raising taxes to help the NHS, as the health service tries to cope with huge waiting lists and an ageing population. Funding the NHS was a top priority but people in other sectors – from universities to social care – feel the budget was a missed opportunity to tackle impending crises or introduce desperately needed reforms in their areas.

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Canada judge halts medically assisted death of woman in rare injunction

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Court order blocks Vancouver physician Ellen Wiebe from euthanizing Alberta resident due to lack of physical ailment

A British Columbia judge has issued a rare, last-minute injunction barring a woman from accessing euthanasia after physicians in her home province refused to approve the request.

The injunction, granted to the woman’s common law partner, blocks the Vancouver physician Ellen Wiebe, or any other medical professional, from “causing the death” of an Alberta woman within the next 30 days.

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Anti-abortion advocate Joanna Howe banned from South Australia’s upper house for alleged ‘threatening’ tactics towards politicians

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Upper house president Terry Stephens says of ‘highest concern’ is suggestion Howe attempted to ‘improperly influence the free performance’ of MLCs’ duties

The anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe has been banned from South Australia’s upper house after its president revealed in parliament that he had received several complaints from MLCs alleging she had used “insults and threatening and intimidating tactics” towards politicians during a debate about the state’s controversial “forced birth” legislation.

The legislation, if passed, would have meant any South Australian seeking an abortion after 27 weeks and six days, would instead be induced, give birth, then either keep or adopt out the child.

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Victoria to cut more than 130 bushfire forest service jobs – As it happened

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Young man dies in multi-vehicle crash in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region

A fatal multi-vehicle traffic crash last night at Elliot in Queensland’s Bundaberg Region last night is being investigated by the police forensic crash Unit.

All travel has been appropriately declared and is a matter of public record.

The only people that need to look at the rules are [shadow transport minister] Bridget McKenzie and Peter Dutton. They’ve got some serious explaining to do.

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Chancellor announces £22.6bn cash injection for NHS in England

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Rachel Reeves hails biggest increase ‘outside of Covid’ since 2010 but health experts say patients may not feel impact

The NHS in England is to receive a £22.6bn cash injection over two years, the chancellor has announced, in what she called the biggest spending increase outside Covid since 2010. But health experts said patients may not feel the impact as much of the increase would be absorbed by pay rises and higher care costs.

Announcing the “down payment” on the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, due in spring 2025, Rachel Reeves said the NHS was the nation’s “most cherished public service” and that the extra funding would help the government cut waiting lists.

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Attorney general considering releasing full robodebt report – As it happened

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Mark Butler flags importance of an Australian CDC in future pandemic responses

The federal health minister, Mark Butler, spoke to ABC News Breakfast this morning, after the Covid inquiry report was released yesterday.

Currently, we’re the only developed country that doesn’t have that single authoritative body that can provide to governments and communities about an evidence-based approach to pandemic response and to other communicable diseases. So that is the foundation on which we build a system to respond to the next pandemic - because there will be a next one – much more effectively than we did to Covid.

We all remember just how incredibly difficult and challenging it was, how it affected every aspect of our lives. And in terms of how the government worked during that period of time – we worked with those public health experts and advisers. Our focus was very much on the health and wellbeing of our community, particularly the vulnerable members of our community who were most at risk.

This was a deadly disease. We saw, particularly overseas, it killed so many people. So we were focused on a public health response – a public health response that was focused on supporting the health of our community, and also too understanding the significant additional supports that we needed to provide to small businesses to support them during this incredibly difficult time.

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Climate crisis caused half of European heat deaths in 2022, says study

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Researchers found 38,000 fewer people – 10 times number of murders – would have died if atmosphere was not clogged with greenhouse pollutants

Climate breakdown caused more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study has found.

Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) found 38,000 fewer people would have died from heat if humans had not clogged the atmosphere with pollutants that act like a greenhouse and bake the planet. The death toll is about 10 times greater than the number of people murdered in Europe that year.

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Australia news live: PM to announce clean energy projects; property market losing heat but prices still going up

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Anthony Albanese to launch schemes in NSW and Victoria today; Domain says rate of price increases is cooling. Follow today’s news headlines live

Bowen derides Coalition’s ‘nuclear fantasy’

Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy, is speaking on ABC Radio National this morning.

If I was the energy minister of another country, I would consider the opportunities that I had in that country – but a country saying to Australia, with our excellent renewable resources, that we should go down the nuclear road when we have no nuclear industry, no nuclear expertise of the scale that we would need for a nuclear power industry, is like us going to Finland or Scandinavia and saying, ‘Listen, we know [you have] a lot of snow, but you should really try beach surfing.’ It just doesn’t make any sense.

We have to play to our strengths in Australia, and we have the best renewable resources in the world, and the opposition wants to stop us using them, and in turn, keep coal in the system for longer. They’re quite explicit about that while we wait for this nuclear fantasy to come on board. That would be terrible for emissions and fatal for energy reliability.

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Diverse sexuality reported by more than one in 10 Australian high school students

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Authors of study that found 12% of year 8 pupils identify as gay, bisexual, pansexual or asexual say results highlight ‘urgent need’ for support services

More than one in 10 Australian teenagers identify as gay, bisexual, pansexual or asexual, a survey of high school students has found.

Researchers surveyed 6,388 year 8 students between 2019 and 2021, finding that 12% of the teens reported diverse sexualities, while 3.3% identified as gender-diverse.

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Researchers study treatment for chronic pain in childhood cancer survivors

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Team at Nottingham Trent University is investigating how chemotherapy in early life could damage nerve cells

Treatments that could help alleviate the chronic pain experienced by thousands of childhood cancer survivors are being investigated by scientists and researchers in the UK.

About eight out of 10 children survive their cancer for 10 years or more but more than half of them report delayed and ongoing pain in adulthood.

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Stop punishing doctors who take part in climate protests, regulator told

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Hundreds of health workers sign letter to General Medical Council calling for halt to suspensions as GP faces jail for activism

Hundreds of health workers have called on the General Medical Council to stop suspending doctors imprisoned for peaceful climate activism ahead of a trial which could see the first jailing of a working GP for a non-violent climate protest in the UK.

Two retired GPs have been suspended by GMC-convened tribunals this year after receiving short sentences for non-violent offences during Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain protests in 2021 and 2022. The medical regulator did not express concerns about the doctors’ clinical capabilities but said their actions undermined public confidence in the profession.

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Change drug policy or risk more poisoning deaths, UK government warned

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Experts call for consumption rooms and wider testing of substances, as number of people dying hits new high

Experts in drug addiction have warned the government must take a different approach towards illegal substance use, or risk an increasing number of deaths from drug poisonings.

Data published by the Office for National Statistics last week showed that the number of people dying as a result of drug poisoning had reached the highest level on record.

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Parents trapped in special needs tribunal backlog as disputes surge by 50%

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Waits of more than a year for hearings into councils’ failure to meet growing needs of Send children

Parents are having to wait more than a year for tribunal hearings into ­inadequate provision for children with special educational needs after new cases surged by more than 50% in a year.

The National Audit Office last week highlighted the worsening ­crisis in the special educational needs and ­disabilities (Send) system, with ­cash-strapped councils unable to meet rising need amid a lack of ­suitable school and college places.

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Seventy-five infected as cases rise in US E coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s

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Update by Food and Drug Administration signals escalation in food poisoning outbreak affecting US west and midwest

The US Food and Drug Administration said on Friday that 75 people had now been infected by the E coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s quarter pounder hamburgers, as the number sickened by the bacterial illness continues to increase.

And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned on Friday: “The true number of sick people in this outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported, and the outbreak may not be limited to the states with known illnesses.”

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Pizza accidentally laced with THC sickens dozens at Wisconsin restaurant

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Famous Yeti’s Pizza picked up wrong jug of oil from commercial kitchen and called it ‘alarming’ for customers

Pizza inadvertently laced with THC – the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana – has apparently sickened dozens of people in Wisconsin.

Health officials in Dane county say Famous Yeti’s Pizza in Stoughton, about 20 miles (32km) south-east of Madison, served pizza contaminated with THC, from Monday through Thursday.

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