Category Archives: Health

Queensland changes laws to accommodate UN prisons inspectors

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A UN anti-torture subcommittee suspended its inspections last year after being refused access to some facilities

The Queensland government has passed a bill to remove legislative barriers that prohibited UN officials from visiting places of detention during their visit to Australia last year.

A UN anti-torture subcommittee suspended its tour of Australian detention facilities in October after Guardian Australia revealed Queensland refused access to some mental health facilities that hold people charged with crimes, while New South Wales blocked inspectors from entering all of its detention facilities.

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Sunak says he wants more information before decision on Braverman’s alleged breach of ministerial code – as it happened

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PM has asked for further information before decided whether ethics adviser Sir Laurie Magnus will be asked to investigate Braverman. This blog is now closed

Starmer says Labour would zone in on the biggest killers.

He says it would get heart attacks and strokes down by a quarter within a decade.

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Woman died on floor after waiting over five hours for ambulance in Wales

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Family of Rachel Rose Gibson believe she had heart attack at home five minutes from hospital in Wrexham

A 58-year-old woman died alone curled up in a blanket on the floor of her bedroom as she waited more than five hours for an ambulance.

Relatives of Rachel Rose Gibson believe she had a heart attack at her home in Wrexham, north Wales, only a short drive away from a hospital, but died before an ambulance reached her.

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Sydney dementia patient ‘didn’t sleep for months’ after police called to subdue her, family say

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Calls for reform grow with daughter of patient saying families should be notified when police are deployed to aged care homes

A family who say they were not told when police were deployed to help control their 79-year-old mother in a Sydney dementia unit are calling for a change to make it mandatory for family to be notified about the use of law enforcement.

On 4 June 2020, paramedics attempted to subdue an agitated Norma Robertson, who had only been in the care of the dementia unit at HammondCare in a Sydney suburb for about four weeks.

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Nigeria’s doctors furious over plans for five years of mandatory service

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MPs back new bill for medical graduates, designed to limit brain drain to countries including the UK and US

A new bill to impose five years’ mandatory service on Nigeria’s medical graduates in an effort to stop the exodus of doctors to the UK and the US has been attacked as “obnoxious”.

The bill, which could be put to a public hearing in the next few days, passed its second reading in the Nigerian parliament’s lower house last month.

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‘I was completely rejected’: Manchester Arena survivor recalls struggle to get therapy

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Ellie Taylor, 15 at the time of 2017 terrorist attack, was shocked by how hard it was to obtain trauma counselling

Ellie Taylor had been looking forward to the Ariana Grande concert for months. It was a 15th birthday present from her mother and was perfectly timed – the day of her first GCSE exam. The date was 22 May 2017.

Ellie, now 21, recalls shards of memory from that appalling day. She remembers watching Martyn Hett “living his best life” as he danced in Block 103 – he was a stranger at the time but she later recognised his face on the news.

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Patients paying £550 an hour to see private GPs amid NHS frustrations

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Signs that NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating surge in people resorting to private care

Patients are paying up to £550 an hour to see private GPs amid frustration at the delays many face getting an appointment with an NHS family doctor.

Growing numbers of paid-for GP services are opening up across Britain, in the latest sign of how the NHS’s inability to offer prompt care is creating a surge in people resorting to private healthcare.

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Half of children given ‘skinny jab’ no longer clinically obese, study finds

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Report says giving semaglutide once a week gave ‘historically unprecedented’ results

Nearly half of children who were assigned the “skinny jab” lost enough weight to no longer be classed as clinically obese, according to research.

The study, led by Dr Aaron Kelly, the co-director of the Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine at the University of Minnesota, looked at 201 adolescents who were classed as clinically obese.

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MP questions referendum wording – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Quad still a priority, White House says

Despite the postponement of Joe Biden’s visit, the White House says that partnerships like the Quad remain a priority.

Revitalizing and reinvigorating our alliances and advancing partnerships like the Quad remains a key priority for the President. This is vital to our ability to advance our foreign policy goals and better promote global stability and prosperity. We look forward to finding other ways to engage with Australia, the Quad, Papua New Guinea and the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum in the coming year.

I think he will obviously be working very hard for this not to happen. We’ve danced this dance before, as the phrase goes …

I think we’ll get to a good place and I think that’s why he’s wanting to stay there, to focus on just that.

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Council in Melbourne declares health emergency, claiming truck pollution is linked to high rates of illness

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Maribyrnong city council says lack of enforcement of road train curfew has undermined its ability to protect residents

A “health emergency” has been declared by a Melbourne council, which claims residents are suffering above-average rates of hospitalisations for certain conditions partly due to a surge in road trains on its suburban streets.

Maribyrnong city council, which takes in Footscray in the city’s inner western suburbs, announced the declaration on Wednesday, claiming rates of illness in the municipality due to pollution “considerably exceed the Australian average”.

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Plans for UK ‘genomics transformation’ aim to act on lessons of Covid

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Ten-year science strategy of UK Health Security Agency will use data to combat infectious diseases faster and more effectively

Health officials in the UK have drawn up plans for a “genomics transformation” that aims to detect and deal with outbreaks of infectious diseases faster and more effectively in the light of the Covid pandemic.

Information gleaned from the genetics of Covid proved crucial as the virus swept around the globe, revealing how the pathogen spread, evolved, and responded to a succession of vaccines and medicines developed to protect people.

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Ministers told to set out plan for hiring mental health nurses in England

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Exclusive: Sector’s staffing crisis will have knock-on effect on whole NHS system, warns healthcare leader

UK ministers must set out how to recruit and retain thousands more mental health nurses to plug the profession’s biggest staff shortage, healthcare leaders are warning.

Mental health nurses account for nearly a third of all nursing vacancies across England, resulting in overstretched services that are struggling to deliver timely care, according to research carried out by the NHS Confederation’s mental health network.

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GPs aiding international student agents to exploit Australian visa ‘loophole’, inquiry hears

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Agents earn extra commission by shuffling foreign students between providers in what Labor calls an unethical ‘shadow economy’

Labor has vowed to crack down on the unregulated world of international education agents after revelations that general practitioners may be involved in student recruitment schemes.

Foreign agents have been used by Australian universities for decades to drive enrolments and assist students offshore with application processes and accommodation.

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Senior doctors in England to vote on industrial action

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BMA says consultant pay has declined by 35% since 2008-9

Senior doctors in England are to vote on whether to strike amid the continued row over pay in healthcare, as teachers’ unions also plan to hold a ballot for industrial action.

The ballot will open on Monday until 27 June as the British Medical Association urges members to approve.

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A third of Britons wait ‘more than a month’ to discuss dementia concerns

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Alzheimer’s Society says fear and confusion delays discussion for 33% of those who think they or a loved one may have dementia

A third of Britons who have concerns about whether they, or a loved one, might have dementia wait more than a month to discuss their worries with others, a leading charity has found, despite early diagnosis being important for treatment, support and planning.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 55 million people have dementia worldwide, with 60-70% of cases thought to be down to Alzheimer disease.

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Overhaul UK fertility law to keep up with advancements, expert says

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Exclusive: IVF in UK ‘is the most successful and the safest it has ever been’, says Tim Child

A leading fertility expert has said the law should be overhauled so that rapid advancements in reproductive science do not stall.

Prof Tim Child of the University of Oxford said IVF in the UK was “the most successful and the safest that it has ever been”, and noted that the chance of having a baby from a single embryo was rising and the likelihood of having multiple births dropping.

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Warnings over NHS data privacy after ‘stalker’ doctor shares woman’s records

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Exclusive: Victim speaks of feeling violated by hospital doctor incident that expert says is evidence of ‘systemic’ flaw in England

The confidentiality of NHS medical records has been thrown into doubt after a “stalker” hospital doctor accessed and shared highly sensitive information about a woman who had started dating her ex-boyfriend, despite not being involved in her care.

The victim was left in “fear, shock and horror” when she learned that the doctor had used her hospital’s medical records system to look at the woman’s GP records and read – and share – intimate details, known only to a few people, about her and her children.

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Australia’s road death toll jumps with fatalities still higher than pre-pandemic

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National automotive body says poor data collection is limiting authorities’ ability to formulate an evidence-based response

Australian roads are becoming deadlier, with an almost 6% jump in road deaths in the past year as fatalities remain significantly higher than before the Covid pandemic and worse than long-term safety targets.

The latest road fatality figures, which cover the 12 months to 31 March, reveal 1,204 deaths on Australian roads – an annual increase of 5.9%.

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Chances were missed to save man who starved in Nottingham, report finds

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DWP, GP surgery and social landlord failed to spot risks for Errol Graham, who had benefits cut despite being severely mentally ill

Welfare officials failed to properly identify the risk of harm to Errol Graham, a severely mentally ill man whose disability benefit payments they cut off and who died of starvation eight months later, an official report has found.

An independent safeguarding review into the “shocking and disturbing” events leading to Graham’s tragic and lonely death concluded that multiple failings by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), his GP practice, and social landlord meant that chances to save him were missed.

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Alternative reality: two kambo deaths spark soul-searching in Australia’s counter-culture capital

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A fortnight of harrowing testimony at consecutive inquests shines a light on the northern rivers’ alternative therapy scene

The road into Mullumbimby beckons like a promise.

With its palm trees and buskers and its slightly raffish air, “Mullum”, as it is known, has long drawn dreamers and idealists looking for alternative ways of being. People come here to escape, to reinvent themselves, to cast away the past, to be healed.

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