Category Archives: Health

Researchers find evidence of ‘forever chemicals’ in blood of pregnant women

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At least 97% of the blood samples contained a type of PFAS known as PFOS, associated with multiple serious health problems

California researchers have found new evidence that several chemicals used in plastic production and a wide array of other industrial applications are commonly present in the blood of pregnant women, creating increased health risks for mothers and their babies.

The researchers said their findings add to a growing body of evidence showing that many chemicals people are routinely exposed to are leading to subtle but harmful changes in health. The work should be a “wake-up call” to policymakers, they said.

This story is co-published with the New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group

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Consultants’ strike to put NHS care in England ‘at a standstill’, says top doctor

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Sir Stephen Powis says two-day strike over pay will cause most severe impact ever seen in the NHS as result of industrial action

Planned NHS hospital care in England will be “virtually at a standstill” on Thursday and Friday when consultants stage their first strike in a decade, the service’s top doctor said.

Their two-day strike over pay will cause “the most severe impact we have ever seen in the NHS as a result of industrial action”, Prof Sir Stephen Powis said on Wednesday.

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Light and noise pollution ‘are neglected health hazards’, say peers

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Lords committee calls for creation of advisory groups to tackle the pollutants, which may increase risk of heart disease and premature death

Light and noise are “neglected pollutants” that are causing significant harm to human health and can cause premature deaths, a group of peers have said.

The science and technology committee of the House of Lords has called on ministers to do more to tackle these pollutants, which it claims are “poorly understood and poorly regulated”.

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‘He could have died’: family calls for better jaundice testing of black and Asian babies

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Jaxson’s symptoms were initially dismissed by health staff in a case that could have had fatal consequences

Soon after her son Jaxson was born, Lauren Clarke spotted that his eyes were yellow and bloodshot. “We kept asking if he had jaundice, but each time we were told to keep feeding him and just put Jaxson in front of a window,” she says.

It was only when Clarke was readmitted six days later with an infection that Jaxson’s jaundice was detected by a midwife. By this time, his levels were becoming dangerously high.

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Councils in England and Wales join calls for ban on disposable vapes

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LGA says single-use e-cigarettes are a litter blight and cause problems in bin lorries and recycling centres

Councils are joining paediatricians in calling for a ban on disposable vapes owing to the environmental damage they cause and the soaring number of young people taking up the addictive products.

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils in England and Wales, said urgent action was needed to save taxpayers’ money – as single-use e-cigarettes are costly to recycle without going through special treatment – protect the planet and keep children safe.

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NHS trust criticised over deaths of new mothers from herpes

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Kimberley Sampson and Samantha Mulcahy died in 2018 after caesarean sections by the same surgeon in Kent

A coroner has criticised an NHS trust over the deaths of two new mothers with herpes.

Kimberley Sampson, 29, and Samantha Mulcahy, 32, died in 2018 after having caesarean sections six weeks apart by the same surgeon at hospitals in Kent.

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Minister calls for pay offer to be taken ‘seriously’ as doctors in England strike

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Health unions suggest industrial action likely to continue as Gillian Keegan defends 6% rise on the table

A senior cabinet minister has urged health unions to take the government’s pay offer “seriously”, after union bosses warned the proposed deal would drive doctors out of the profession and could lead to further strikes.

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, defended the offer of a 6% pay rise for junior doctors a day after the government accepted the recommendations of the public sector pay review bodies.

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Nationals accuse Labor of ‘hypocrisy’ over response to scathing APVMA report – as it happened

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Cabinet meeting to decide Lowe’s successor today

Philip Lowe will be replaced as the Reserve Bank governor, with today’s cabinet meeting to decide his successor, Guardian Australia has confirmed.

If I was asked to continue in the role, I would be honoured to do that and I would continue.

If I am not asked to continue in the role, I will do my best to support my successor, and the treasurer has said he will make an announcement before the end of this month.

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US regulators approve first over-the-counter contraceptive pill

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No age restriction on sales for Perrigo’s once-a-day Opill, which will be available in stores and online early next year

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first over-the-counter contraceptive pill, allowing millions of women and girls in the country to buy contraception without a prescription at a time when some states have sought to restrict access to birth control and abortion.

FDA officials said on Thursday it cleared Perrigo’s Opill – an every day, prescription-only hormonal contraception first approved in 1973 – to be sold over-the-counter. The pill will be available in stores and online in the first quarter of next year, and there will be no age restrictions on sales. The regulatory approval paves the way for people to purchase the pill” without a prescription for the first time since oral contraceptives became widely available in the 1960s.

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Rishi Sunak driving doctors out of NHS with pay offer, say union leaders

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Public service workers in England offered 5%-7% rises but departments must fund them from existing budgets

Health union leaders have reacted furiously to a warning from Rishi Sunak that his offer of a 6% pay rise this year was final and that “no amount of strikes” would change his mind, as they began their longest walkout yet in England.

The British Medical Association said the government was “driving doctors away” from the health service and had missed an opportunity to put a credible pay offer on the table to end strikes when it accepted all the recommendations of the pay review bodies.

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UK care home employed 80-year-old nurse who was not able to help lift residents

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HC-One employed nurse at Tower Bridge Care Centre, which was found to be ‘not safe’ by inspectors

One of Britain’s biggest care home companies employed an 80-year-old senior nurse in a short-staffed care home who was older than some residents and not strong enough to help lift them.

HC-One employed the octogenarian at Tower Bridge Care Centre, which was found by inspectors to be “inadequate” and “not safe”, in a case that highlights a chronic shortage of care workers across the UK.

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Tests to assess newborns health not effective for BAME babies in UK

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Minority ethnic newborns risk late diagnosis and poorer health as guidance was developed for white European babies in 1952

Tests to assess newborn babies’ health are not effective for non-white children and should be replaced, according to the NHS Race and Health Observatory.

In the UK, neonatal death rates among black and Asian newborns are much higher than for white babies.

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A limit to ageing? Australian life expectancy is rising, but new report asks why few live to 110

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More people are making it to 100, but there’s little change in the proportion of ‘supercentenarians’, a report has found

Despite average life expectancy increasing, the proportion of Australians making it to age 110 has barely shifted since the 1960s, with a new report asking whether there is a limit to how far lifespan can be pushed.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) on Tuesday published its How long can Australians live? report, containing the latest life expectancy and longevity data. Over the past five decades, life expectancy in Australia has increased by 13.7 years for males (to 81.3) and by 11.2 years for females (to 85.4).

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Australia’s drug regulator received two hoax reports of children dying from Covid vaccines

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Exclusive: Therapeutic Goods Administration documents reveal separate reports made in 2022 about two boys, aged six and seven, were false

Australia’s drug regulator received two reports of child deaths after vaccination against Covid-19 that turned out to be hoaxes.

Therapeutic Goods Administration documents on fatal adverse events in children and adolescents after a Covid-19 vaccination published under freedom of information show that a report was made to the body in January 2022 that a seven-year-old boy had died from “an adverse event following immunisation” with an unspecified brand of Covid vaccine.

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UK’s soaring liver cancer death rate blamed on alcohol and obesity

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Charity calls on government to do more to restrict unhealthy lifestyle choices

One of the country’s leading health charities is calling for urgent action to reduce the “carcinogenic effects” of cheap alcohol and unhealthy food after a 40% increase in deaths from liver cancer in a decade.

Liver cancer is now the fastest rising cause of cancer death in the UK, warns the British Liver Trust. Since the early 1970s, liver cancer mortality rates have more than tripled.

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WA family demand answers over the unexpected death of one-year-old daughter

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The toddler died at Perth Children’s hospital less than 24 hours after being sent home by a GP, according to the family and advocates

A Western Australia family is demanding answers after the death of a one-year-old baby a day after she was sent home by a GP, before being rushed to a Perth hospital emergency room.

The family’s spokesperson, Desmond Blurton, said his niece, Charmain Blurton, and her partner, Cody Yappo, took their daughter to their local doctor when she began feeling unwell.

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Older UK workers who retired early in pandemic were ‘forced into poverty’

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Thinktank challenges view that those taking early retirement under Covid were relatively well off

Half of older adults who left the UK workforce amid mass redundancies in the first year of the Covid pandemic ended up falling into relative poverty, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Britain’s foremost economics thinktank said job losses during the early stages of the crisis, coupled with the additional health risks faced by older workers, were likely to have forced many people into early retirement.

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Skin cancer cases reach record high in UK with sharp rise among older adults

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Cancer Research UK says melanoma cases ‘could soar’ by 50% over next 20 years and warns against sunburn

The number of people in the UK being diagnosed with skin cancer has hit a record high with a sharp rise among over-55s.

Melanoma cases across all age groups have reached 17,500 a year in the UK, the highest since records began, according to Cancer Research UK.

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‘Safe and effective’: first malaria vaccine to be rolled out in 12 African countries

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An initial 18m doses will be delivered over the next two years to combat a disease that kills nearly half a million children annually

A long-awaited vaccine for malaria has been announced for rollout across 12 African countries over the next two years, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives.

An initial 18m doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine have been assigned to the countries where the risk of children falling ill and dying from malaria is highest, according to a statement from the global vaccine alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef.

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Senator says she has been ‘excluded’ from writing pamphlet – as it happened

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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.

“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”

This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …

Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.

He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.

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