Category Archives: Health

Patients warned many doctors won’t change approach to bulk billing despite new incentives

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Boosted rebate for concession card holders and children under 16 is in effect but GPs’ peak body says other patients won’t benefit

Many Australian patients won’t see their doctors return to bulk billing despite incentives introduced by the Albanese government, GPs have warned, while experts say more measures are needed to help disadvantaged, chronically ill people.

Patients who are bulk billed do not pay anything for their consult, with GPs billing the government directly through Medicare instead.

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Cobra meetings on Covid were not ‘optimally effective’, former head of NHS England tells inquiry – UK politics live

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Simon Stevens says the meetings were large and sometimes ministers there did not have full authority

O’Connor asks Stevens if people tried to force him out of his job during Covid.

Stevens says that is not what people were saying to him at the time.

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The tobacco industry claims smoking reforms fuel the black market. Health experts say this is wrong

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Proposed changes such as plain packaging for vapes and individual cigarette warnings come under microscope at Senate hearing

In three days of hearings about wide-ranging law reforms aimed at discouraging smoking and addressing the health risks posed by vaping, one issue dominated the questioning of health experts by senators.

Will the changes actually fuel the tobacco and vape black market?

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Tenant killed himself after landlord failed to resolve repeated noise complaints

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Ombudsman orders UK housing association Clarion to apologise to family in ‘deeply distressing’ case

A tenant killed himself after his landlord dismissed his pleas for help with a noisy neighbour as “whining” and told him he could not expect silence if he lived in London.

Clarion, the UK’s largest housing association, had been warned by the vulnerable resident’s doctor that the effect of noise from the upstairs flat on the tenant’s mental health was such that he had already attempted suicide twice.

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‘Disturbing’: US infant mortality rises at highest rate in 20 years

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CDC data shows rate rose 3% last year but experts say they are not sure why statistic that has been falling should have risen sharply

The US infant mortality rate rose 3% last year – the largest increase in two decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

White and Native American infants, infant boys and babies born at 37 weeks or earlier had significant death rate increases. The CDC’s report, published Wednesday, also noted larger increases for two of the leading causes of infant deaths – maternal complications and bacterial meningitis.

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‘There is no ban’: Republicans test-drive new abortion messaging

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Ad released in Virginia part of well-funded effort to portray Democrats as abortion extremists and Republicans as reasonable compromisers

The ad opens with the sound of a fetal heartbeat.

“Most people believe that abortion at the moment of birth is wrong, far beyond any reasonable limit. Not Virginia Democrats,” a female narrator says, just before the sound of a baby cooing and crying. “They fought to make late-term abortions the rule, not the exception.”

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Fires in Queensland tropics – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

The NSW RFS has confirmed that just after 4am this morning one of its firefighting tanks rolled over 10km south of Jennings in the Tenterfield LGA.

A spokesperson said there were four firefighters on board. They were all taken from the truck, with three being taken to hospital for observation.

They’ve said they’ll be returning to bulk billing, or many of them who are considering a change would stick with bulk billing, for those more than 11 million Australians.

That’s about 60% or more of the throughput of the average general practice. So it’s a huge boost in confidence and funding to a sector that I think is probably in its most powerless status been in the 40 year history of Medicare.

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Victorian government scrambling to prepare for long-planned end of public drunkenness laws

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Sobering-up facility not completed, emergency workers unclear about their role in new scheme – and it begins on Melbourne Cup Day

It’s been almost six years since Tanya Day hopped on a train to Melbourne but never made it to the city.

The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman was arrested for being drunk in public on 5 December 2017 after she fell asleep. She was placed in a police cell to sober up, suffered a head injury and later died.

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Health Star Rating only on about a third of Australian supermarket products that should carry it, report shows

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Researcher says consumers can’t make the ‘best choices’ as rating missing on more than half of products

The government’s flagship initiative to improve Australians’ diets is “working great” as a marketing tool for food manufacturers, but is not helping people make healthier choices, new research has found.

The Health Star Rating system was introduced in 2014 as a government-led front-of-pack nutrition label designed to be a simple way to compare the overall nutritional quality of products on the shelf, as recommended by the World Health Organisation.

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‘Alarming’ rates of babies with antibiotic-resistant bugs in Asia-Pacific, Australian study finds

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Study urges Australia to research new drugs as it warns rate of mutated infections ‘much worse than anticipated’

“Alarming” rates of babies with infections resistant to common antibiotics in the Asia-Pacific region should prompt urgent investment into new drugs for treating childhood diseases, findings from a new study suggest.

The misuse and overuse of antibiotics is driving bugs to mutate so that common drugs are no longer effective to kill them, known as antimicrobial resistance. Dr Phoebe Williams, an infectious diseases paediatrician and antimicrobial resistance researcher with the University of Sydney, said she regularly travelled to work in hospitals in the south-east Asia and Pacific region where she found “entire wards of babies that have multi-drug resistant infections, and there is nothing left to treat them with”.

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Death of baby after UK hospital missed vitamin jab ‘beyond cruel’, parents say

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Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge failed to give William Moris-Patto a routine vitamin K injection

The parents of a baby boy who died at seven weeks old after a hospital did not give him a routine injection have described the failure as “beyond cruel”.

William Moris-Patto was born in July 2020 at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, where it was recorded in error that he had received a vitamin K injection – which is needed for blood clotting. The shot is routinely given to newborns to prevent a deficiency that can lead to bleeding.

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‘Misleading’ A&E figures in England hiding poor performance

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Emergency doctors say figures are aggregated with those of minor injury centres to get closer to targets

NHS bosses are using misleading figures to hide dangerously poor performance by A&E units in England against the four-hour treatment target, emergency department doctors claim.

Some A&Es treat and admit, transfer or discharge as few as one in three patients within four hours, although the NHS constitution says they should deal with 95% of arrivals within that timeframe.

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Doctors from around the world unite to call for urgent climate action

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Health bodies demand all governments immediately cease expansion of new fossil fuel infrastructure and production

Global health bodies are demanding international governments urgently phase out fossil fuels and fast-track renewable energy as health professionals increasingly see patients suffering from harm caused by climate change.

The world’s leading GP and health bodies, representing more than three million health professionals worldwide, will deliver an open letter on Saturday calling for urgent action against climate change to protect the health of communities.

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Kate has endometriosis – and gastro problems. New research shows she’s not alone

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Genetic links have been revealed between the crippling chronic condition and painful gastrointestinal disorders

After 16 rounds of surgery for endometriosis, Kate Fisher underwent a hysterectomy at age 34.

She thought it would mean an end to the debilitatingly painful periods – instead, she began shedding from her bowel each month.

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Australian politician’s speech at tobacco conference in September allegedly in breach of WHO treaty

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Exclusive: Discussion on panel came as federal government was developing reforms to address high rates of youth nicotine addiction

An Australian politician spoke at the tobacco industry’s flagship conference in South Korea, despite the federal government developing reforms to address alarming rates of youth nicotine addiction.

It is the first time in more than a decade that a serving Australian politician has spoken at a tobacco industry-funded conference. Attending such events could breach a World Health Organization (WHO) treaty, to which Australia is a signatory.

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Firebombing death of bus driver in Brisbane could have been avoided with better decisions, coroner finds

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Decision to discharge ‘low risk’ Anthony O’Donohue from mental health service in 2016 found to be ‘not satisfactory’

The firebombing death of a young bus driver “might not have occurred” if different decisions had been made about the care of the mental health patient who had been deemed “low risk” before killing him, Queensland’s state coroner has found.

Terry Ryan handed down his findings a day before the seventh anniversary of the death of Manmeet Sharma, a 29-year-old from India who had been working as a bus driver for the Brisbane city council for just three months.

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Penny Wong urges Australians in Lebanon to ‘consider leaving’ – As it happened

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Foreign minister flags government’s concerns about ‘volatile security situation’. This blog is now closed

Pay deal averts six-day strike by dairy workers

A looming strike at one of Victoria’s major milk companies has been averted after the processor struck a pay deal with the union.

There is some concern around Mount Isa, and we are looking at what we can do to support that area being so remote in the western part of our state.

So looking at the weather we have today, still very extreme fire danger in the western part of Queensland. We are certainly looking at another challenging day.

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Dementia could affect 1.7m people in England and Wales by 2040, data finds

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Figure is 42% higher than previous estimates and would pose ‘enormous threat’ to healthcare systems

Dementia poses an “enormous threat” to healthcare systems and the general public in England and Wales, experts have warned, as data suggests 1.7 million people will have the condition by 2040.

It is already known to be among the most serious health and social care threats and a new analysis shows the total number affected could be 42% higher than previously estimated.

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UK public warned over dangers of fake weight loss medication pens

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Pre-filled injection devices claimed to hold Ozempic or Saxenda may contain other substances, regulator says

The UK medicines regulator has issued a public warning about fake and potentially harmful weight loss pens after seizing hundreds of devices sold by illegal traders.

The pens, with which the traders’ drugs are injected, are claimed to contain the medications Ozempic (semaglutide) or Saxenda (liraglutide), which are used for weight loss. However, these pens are thought to contain other substances.

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Poorer Australian regions lose out in ‘flawed’ allocation of doctors, GP body says

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System of identifying shortages leads to skewing of resources towards wealthier areas, according to Royal Australian College of General Practitioners

Several poor rural regions are being disadvantaged by the way the Australian government identifies significant doctor shortages, while some wealthy areas are being classified as needing extra resources.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners has argued that the system – which determines which regions need additional resources – is flawed and is exacerbating rural GP workforce shortages.

Doctors trained overseas are crucial to easing GP shortages across the country because for their first 10 years in Australia they must work in areas of need, known as a distribution priority area, to access Medicare benefits.

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