Category Archives: Health

Census questions on trans and gender diverse people ‘critical’ and not too complex, health institutes tell Labor

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Health bodies say the questions are needed to fill gaps in much-needed research

Leading health experts have criticised the federal government for suggesting proposed LGBTQI+ questions should be excluded from the census because they were “too complex” – arguing similar questions are already used elsewhere.

Versions of the proposed questions have been answered by 85,000 Australians in existing health surveys administered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

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NHS faces ‘tipping point’ in England where most appointments will not be with GPs

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Rapidly falling number of family doctors will harm ‘continuity and quality’ of care according to new research

The NHS in England is heading towards a “tipping point” after which GPs will no longer provide the majority of appointments because their numbers are falling so fast.

That is the conclusion of an extensive piece of new research that also shows one in five surgeries has shut and the number of patients each family doctor looks after has soared over the last decade.

1,625 GP surgeries closed between 2013 and 2023 – a fall of 20% or 178 a year – reducing the total number from 8,044 to 6,419.

The average number of patients on each surgery’s books rose by 40% – or 291 a year – over the same period, from 6,967 to 9,724.

Total patient numbers have grown from 56 million to 62.4 million.

Although the overall number of GPs working in the NHS rose, after taking changes in working hours into account those working the equivalent of full-time fell from 27,948 to 27,321.

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Private equity ownership of US hospice centers boomed in recent years – study

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Investors spent about $1tn buying healthcare facilities over last decade, leading to reports of worsening patient care

Private equity investors are increasingly buying up hospice centers – healthcare facilities meant to focus on pain relief and emotional support for people near the end of their lives.

The new study was published in the journal Health Affairs and provides more evidence of how private equity have acquired firms using often sophisticated and opaque ownership structures.

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Elle Macpherson refused chemotherapy after secret breast cancer diagnosis

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Supermodel says she is in remission after being diagnosed seven years ago and rejecting traditional medicine

Elle Macpherson has said she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago but is now in remission despite refusing chemotherapy.

The Australian supermodel and actor, who rose to fame in the 1980s, is publishing a memoir – Elle: Life, Lessons, and Learning to Trust Yourself – in which she says she took a holistic approach to the illness, going against the advice of 32 doctors.

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‘We cannot protect our children’: parents in Gaza face new threat of polio

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Vaccination is likely to be an uphill struggle after re-emergence of the disease in the territory, where war has decimated healthcare

Like so many in Gaza, Eid al-Attar, a teacher from the north of the territory, now spends his days trying to find enough food and water to keep his family alive. Displaced eight times since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out in October, the 42-year-old has tried his best to shield his five children from the conflict. Now the Palestinian territory is facing a new danger: the highly infectious and potentially deadly disease, polio.

“We cannot protect our children. We are exposed to death at any moment due to the constant bombardment and insecurity. And I cannot protect them from diseases either,” he said in Deir al-Balah on Sunday as a UN-led vaccination campaign got under way.

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Australian teenagers’ mental health problems linked to vaping, study finds

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High school students with depression or poor wellbeing are twice as likely to have vaped at some time, survey of 5,000 shows

Australian high school students with symptoms of severe depression or poor wellbeing are twice as likely to have tried vaping, a new study has found.

The study also found one-fifth of students in years 7 and 8 had moderate to severe depression symptoms and demonstrated the need for early intervention targeting both mental health and vaping, experts said.

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Pregnant women and older people in England offered RSV vaccine on NHS

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Programme for respiratory syncytial virus could prevent estimated 5,000 hospitalisations annually in infants

Pregnant women and older people across England will be routinely vaccinated against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) for the first time, the NHS has said.

From 1 September the NHS will vaccinate pregnant women from 28 weeks onwards and adults turning 75. Adults aged 75 to 79 will be offered a catchup vaccine to make sure they are protected.

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Many patients leave GP appointment without discussing all worries, survey shows

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Ipsos poll found 40% of Britons thought there was not enough time to raise all concerns in 10-minute slot

Two-fifths of patients leave their GP appointment without discussing everything that is worrying them about their health, a survey has revealed.

The finding has prompted claims that older people often feel family doctors “want them out the door as soon as possible” rather than listening to all their concerns.

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Mosquito-borne virus prompts public health restrictions in Massachusetts – and backlash

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Climate crisis could accelerate spread of mosquito-borne diseases like eastern equine encephalitis, experts warn

Local officials in Massachusetts have issued warnings about mosquitoes carrying eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), and, in one case, placed restrictions on the use of public fields at night, prompting backlash from some residents.

Public health experts, and others, are also concerned that such mosquito-borne viruses could become more common in the United States because of the climate crisis.

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African nations hit by mpox still waiting for vaccines – despite promises by the west

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Last week’s planned rollout of doses faces further delays as campaigners complain of greed and inequality

None of the African countries affected by the outbreak of a new variant of mpox have received any of the promised vaccine, pushing back a rollout that had been planned for last week.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been at the centre of an outbreak of the new clade 1b variant, with 18,000 suspected cases and 629 deaths this year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

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Dangerous play: how online gaming purchases led an Australian youth into a secret gambling addiction

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Matthew’s* father had no idea his son was even gambling, let alone deep in debt, until he got a terrifying phone call

Vincent* didn’t know his 20-year-old son Matthew* was gambling until he took a phone call from him as he stood on a cliff’s edge after racking up thousands of dollars of debt.

Matthew was crying and revealed a gambling problem which had begun years earlier with online gaming, causing increasing debt. Matthew had opened up to another family member earlier that evening, who made him feel more ashamed, calling him an idiot.

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NHS queues mean most Britons expect to pay for healthcare, says report

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Joseph Rowntree Foundation points to ‘critical shift in expectations’ and says the public now budget for many routine services

Most people in the UK now believe they will have to spend their own money on private healthcare for routine services such as dentistry, physiotherapy and counselling because they won’t be able to get them quickly on the NHS, pioneering new research has found.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says its findings, based on extensive focus group analysis, is evidence that Britons have undergone a “critical shift in expectations” about the health service’s capacity to meet their needs.

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Will Labour resist the ‘killer tactics’ of industry’s enemies of public health?

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A new report lays down a challenge to Keir Starmer to take on vested interests of food, drink and tobacco companies

Illness, disease and death can be the result of bad luck, genetic factors or people’s lifestyles – whether someone smokes, drinks a lot or consumes a lot of junk food, for example.

The role of lifestyle in explaining why the UK is an increasingly sick country, and the growing pressures on the NHS, is often underappreciated. Experts tend to cite the growing and, especially, ageing population, which are both key factors.

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UK MPs urged to give up freebies from tobacco, alcohol and junk food firms

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Health groups challenge Starmer to ban ‘unhealthy products’ firms from lobbying MPs by giving them gifts

MPs are being urged to stop accepting freebies to sports and cultural events from tobacco, alcohol and junk food firms because their products cause so much illness and death.

More than 100 health groups are urging Britain’s lawmakers to reject offers of gifts and hospitality from “unhealthy products industries” because they use an array of underhand tactics to disguise the harm they create in order to protect their sales.

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US repeating Covid mistakes with bird flu as spread raises alarm, experts say

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Public health experts warn ‘overinflated view of abilities’ and restrictive laws could make next outbreak more lethal

The US is making the same mistakes with the H5N1 bird flu virus as with Covid, even as the highly pathogenic avian influenza continues spreading on American farms and raising alarms that it could mutate to become a pandemic, public health experts argue in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We’re closing our eyes to both the Covid pandemic and to a potential nascent bird flu [pandemic] on the horizon,” said Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health and co-author of the article. “Our ability to react swiftly and decisively is the big problem.”

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WHO delivers 1.2m polio vaccine doses to Gaza as pauses in fighting agreed

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Three-day humanitarian pauses in several areas planned to allow inoculation of more than 640,000 children

The World Health Organization has said it delivered 1.2m doses of polio vaccine to Gaza, with 400,000 more to follow, as part of an emergency campaign after the first case of the childhood disease in the war-hit coastal strip in quarter of a century.

The vaccinations, due to begin this weekend, will be accompanied by three-day pauses in the fighting in several areas of the territory to allow the inoculation of more than 640,000 children.

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Australia news live: BoM predicts warm spring as Sydney faces high fire danger and four states warned of high winds

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Windy weekend in prospect as BoM forecasts warmer-than-usual spring. Follow the day’s news live

Good morning and welcome to the end-of-week news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the best of the overnight stories to get you up to speed before hosting duties switch to Emily Wind.

Mano Yogalingam was 23 years old and had “his whole life in front of him”. But the stresses and strains of living with the prospect of being deported back to Sri Lanka pushed him over the edge and he took his own life this week. Our top story this morning hears from refugee advocates who say the death of the Tamil asylum seeker has exposed the failings of the fast-track immigration system. “All of these people have been failed by the system. It’s a total cobweb of cruelty,” one said.

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Suicide rates in England and Wales reach highest level since 1999

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Samaritans charity calls on government to invest in suicide prevention as it has with smoking reduction

Ministers have been urged to treat suicide as a public health crisis after the rate at which people killed themselves in England and Wales reached the highest level in more than two decades.

The official figures, described by the suicide prevention charity Samaritans as “worse than expected”, showed 6,069 suicides were registered in the two nations in 2023, up from 5,642 in 2022 and the highest rate since 1999.

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Starmer faces pushback from pubs over ‘bonkers’ outdoor smoking curb plans

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Hospitality industry expresses concern about impact on businesses of leaked proposals not denied by PM

Keir Starmer is on a collision course with the hospitality industry and political opponents after signalling plans for major curbs on outdoor smoking.

The proposals, not denied by the prime minister, would potentially prohibit tobacco use outside pubs and restaurants, including on pavements. The restrictions would come on top of existing plans to gradually outlaw smoking year by year.

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Sale of chemical used in suicides of three transgender women should be restricted, Victorian inquest finds

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Sodium nitrite has been used in dozens of deaths in the state and federal government should take action, coroner says

The sale of a chemical used by three transgender women who took their own lives should be restricted by the federal government, the Victorian coroner says, after an inquest heard it has been used in dozens of suicides in the state.

Victoria’s coroners court last year held an inquest into the suicides of five transgender women who died between 2020 and 2021, including that of Matt Byrne, 25, who took her life after a botched back yard surgery.

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