Parents will have to provide proof their offspring have had a full range of vaccinations when they put in applications for primary schools.

The plan, designed to increase the take-up of the measles, mumps and rubella triple jab, has been drawn up by Mary Creagh, the Labour MP in charge of the party’s health manifesto for the next general election.

“Parents need to protect their children and science gives them a way to do that,” said Creagh. “We need to get that message across.”

However, doctors’ leaders warned that the idea was “morally dubious”.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the British Medical Association, said: “A Stalinist approach like this would be likely to backfire.”

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, accused Labour of “playing politics” with children’s lives.

Take-up of the MMR jab fell dramatically after research – now discredited – appeared to show a link between the triple vaccination and autism.

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3909515.ece

Health Direct finds the latest labour “thinking” plain incredible. The highest proportion of children who do not have the vaccine live in inner London, so labour’s plans will compound the disadvantage that these children will endure.

Nine in 10 inpatients in England said their care was good, very good or excellent, the Health Commission poll of almost 76,000 people showed.

But problems with the quality of food, information on treatment and the use of mixed sex facilities were reported.

The government said it would look to drive up standards where necessary.

But campaigners said the results were worrying and demonstrated that the NHS was struggling to give patients the respect and dignity they deserved.

OVERALL APPROVAL RATINGS
Top five trusts:
Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital NHS Trust, Oswestry: 92
Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, East Grinstead, West Sussex: 91
The Cardiothoracic Centre, Liverpool NHS Trust: 90
Christie Hospital NHS Trust, Manchester: 90
Royal Marsden, London: 90

Bottom five trusts:
Ealing Hospital, London: 65
Homerton University Hospital, London: 67
Mayday, Croydon: 67
Barking, Havering and Redbridge Hospitals NHS Trust, London: 68
North Middlesex University Hospital, London: 69
On a scale of 0 (poor) to 100 (very good)

Overall, one in four patients said they shared a sleeping area with patients of the opposite sex when first admitted – but in some of the 165 trusts this rose to nearly half, while others had almost no sharing.

For non-emergency care, which is where the labour government has promised to eradicate the use of mixed-sex accommodation, one in 10 said they had shared a sleeping area.

On the quality of food, just over half described it as good, while 15% said it was poor.

A fifth of those needing help with eating also said they did not get it, but again there were big variations, with more than 40% reporting a lack of help in some trusts.

Patients also reported problems with the way they were kept informed about decisions relating to their care. One in five said they were not given enough information.

Mixed sex wards

The numbers saying their wards or rooms were very clean has also fallen slightly in the last five years to 53%, despite the focus on hospital infections such as MRSA.

However, overall attitudes to the care patients received were largely positive.

The numbers saying their care was excellent rose from 41% to 42% in the last year. Overall, 92% said it was good, very good or excellent.

Healthcare Commission chief executive Anna Walker said the findings were “encouraging”. But she added: “Some hospitals are struggling to deliver on some of the basics of hospital care.

“There are striking variations in performance in key areas. Those performing poorly must learn form those who perform well.”

And Charlotte Potter, of Help the Aged, added: “Scores in some trusts were worryingly low when it came to being treated with dignity and respect or receiving help with eating – areas of care particularly important to older people.”

From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7397037.stm

Labour government figures show the National Health Service aims to save up to £500m a year from an “inpatient management programme” that it describes as preventing unnecessary hospital admissions and reducing the length of time patients spend in hospital.

Cancer doctors and health economists say the changes could make better use of money for cancer treatment but accuse the government of hiding the extent of the bed closures from the public.

The report by Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at Imperial College School of Medicine, London, and Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, a private cancer treatment company, comes as a shake-up of NHS hospitals, led by Lord Darzi, the health minister, is expected to include widespread closures of maternity hospitals and accident and emergency units.

Bosanquet and Sikora have analysed figures published by the government as part of its Cancer Reform Strategy in December. They reveal the efficiency savings the NHS will need to make in order to pay for better radiotherapy and screening programmes.

“My worry,” said Sikora, “is that the only way the Cancer Reform Strategy adds up financially is by massive bed closures to produce the funding for the huge deficits in both radiotherapy and cancer drugs.

“Up to 5,000 beds will need to disappear in England to make the spreadsheet balance. How else will the money be saved? Interestingly, the financials are not in the strategy document but hidden in an obscure corner of the Department of Health website.”

The government said cancer services must change so that patients can receive chemotherapy and radiotherapy during day trips to local clinics without going to hospital. It is also centralising specialist cancer care in larger hospitals where there is the expertise to get the best results.

The government has been forced to review NHS cancer treatment after studies showed that, despite spending comparable amounts on the disease as other European countries, Britain still has some of the worst survival rates.

Bosanquet, who was chairman of the Cancer Reform Strategy value for money group, said cutting beds could make better use of NHS funds but added the government should be more open about its plans.

“The Department of Health has put forward aspirations that must inevitably be to lower bed use in cancer services by around 5,000,” he said. “To save £500m, which is urgently needed to build up these community centres, they will need to reduce bed use in cancer services and the best estimate is that it would be by about 5,000 beds. I would urge the Department of Health to be a lot more open about it.”

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3908507.ece

Health Direct thinks that Professor Sikora is spot on when saying some cancer patients are so sick after chemotherapy and radiotherapy that they need to stay in hospital and also that they just need nursing as opposed to high tech beds in large hospitals.

Heart attack victims in London and other major cities are diverted past their nearest A&E; to special hospital units where they have an operation to stop the attack.

But in many rural areas patients are either given less-effective drugs in the ambulance or receive them at their local hospital.

Patients who receive the operation, known as primary angioplasty, are at least twice as likely to survive, suffer less damage to their heart, leave hospital on average two days sooner and have a better quality of life afterwards.

The operation involves inflating a balloon in the blocked artery to reopen the blood flow. Last year only a fifth of heart attack patients received the treatment.

Data has shown it is most effective when carried out within two hours of the onset of chest pain. If more centres were set up, all patients in rural areas could be picked up by air ambulance and be in the operating theatre within that time.

The mortality rate from heart attacks within the M25 has halved since the network of specialist units started providing round-the-clock primary angioplasty. The treatment is provided round-the-clock in London, the West Midlands and Greater Manchester.

Patients in East Anglia, Hereford, Worcestershire, Cheshire, Merseyside and Kent receive only clot-reducing drug treatment known as thrombolysis.

Thrombolysis has a 60-70 per cent success rate and the number of patients who go on to suffer a further clot is relatively high. With a primary angioplasty, the success rate is about 90 to 95 per cent.

Prof Martin Rothman, the development director of the London Chest Hospital, said: “It is a turf issue between doctors, and different ambulance services have trained their paramedics to use the thrombolysis drugs instead.

“Thrombolysis is a dark ages approach. If you give the drugs to the wrong patients, those who are not having heart attacks, it can be fatal, and that does not happen with primary angioplasty.

“Data clearly shows primary angioplasty is better. It is a postcode issue. There is no reason why primary angioplasty should not be rolled out across the country.”

Prof Peter Weissberg, the medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said Britain is moving towards a primary angioplasty service but it should not be attempted overnight as this would damage the “first class” thrombolysis service.

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Postcode-lottery-claims-heart-attack-victims.html

Labour ministers are preparing for a summer of protest as residents campaign against proposals that could mean local hospitals losing specialist services to large regional centres.

In an attempt to head off the reaction that could mar the 60th anniversary of the NHS in July, Lord Darzi, the health minister, has pledged that patients would be involved in decisions and hospital units would not close before new ones opened.

Lord Darzi, a surgeon, said specialist services would be moved into larger regional centres only where there was evidence to prove that doing this would provide better care.

But critics argue that this will mean patients having to travel much farther for an operation or an appointment.

The plans, which appear to have been held back until after last week’s local elections, will be released over the next four weeks by the nine Strategic Health Authorities in England.

They include setting a local target of reducing the four-hour wait in A&E; to two hours, setting up dedicated trauma centres and better co-ordination of out of hours services.

However, in many cases, the changes – which result from Lord Darzi’s continuing review of the NHS – will lead to services provided by cottage and district hospitals being moved out of the area.

He acknowledged that the plans would bring protest and said that in the past, officials were poor at communicating the reasons behind such changes.

Lord Darzi said that where care did not need to be provided in hospitals it could be moved into health centres, GP clinics and cottage hospitals closer to patient’s homes.

He is convinced that when doctors have led previous changes and explained that they were not being carried out for financial reasons but in the interests of better care, the local community eventually agreed to the plans.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Lord Darzi said the plans were not about closing local hospitals or shutting down good services but were aimed at improving standards of NHS care.

“We need to be much more ambitious,” he said. “We spend £110 billion a year on the NHS and we have to challenge ourselves in raising the clinical bar.”

He said the challenges of an ageing population and increasing numbers of patients with long-term conditions such as asthma, diabetes and cancer meant changes were needed.

But campaigners and opposition MPs expressed concern. Residents and patients in Ipswich are already furious at proposals to move the head and neck cancer service from the local hospital to Norwich.

“Patients want to be treated in their local hospital safely,” Katherine Murphy, of the Patients Association, said.

“To be admitted to a hospital 60 miles away from your home is not convenient. It is all very well having specialist centres around the country but it is not want the public want.”

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, said: “We value our local NHS services and don’t want to lose them. Labour seem completely out of touch with that feeling.

“The hints Lord Darzi has given today about his plans for the NHS sound extremely ominous.

“We already know about the huge upheaval and loss of local services there’s likely to be in London; now we learn that something similar will happen in every single region.

“Lord Darzi is tripping over himself to say there isn’t another big, top-down reorganisation of the NHS coming; unfortunately he has only heightened suspicion that that’s exactly what this is.”

Councillors will be able to raise objections with Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary. He can ask for an independent panel of experts for advice and where this has happened in the past, the verdict has usually been accepted.

Dr Hamish Meldrum, the chairman of the British Medical Association, said: “These principles are all positive – in fact they’re impossible to disagree with. The problem is that the public and health-care staff have yet to see much evidence of them being delivered.”

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1939162/NHS-shake-up-to-axe-hospital-services.html

Health Direct asks what became of joined up thinking and a green focus? By closing local health facilities- patients, relatives and friends will have to fork out more on brown’s transport stealth taxes to travel further to visit the victims.

Warnings over a new recruitment system and possible job shortages were ignored by the Department of Health, says the Commons health committee.

The labour government’s failure to restrict the access of overseas doctors to training posts in Britain was also “inexcusable”, it says.

The report also singles out Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Medical Officer for England, saying that confidence in his abilities among the medical profession has been “seriously damaged” by the debacle.

Doctors’ groups said the report was a “damning indictment” of the Government’s failure to listen to warnings from the medical profession.

Thousands of junior doctors found themselves in limbo last year when a combination of factors, including a new computerised recruitment process, left their search for jobs in disarray.

Hundreds marched in protest, which prompted an apology from Patricia Hewitt, the former health secretary.

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1936349/Ministers-%27ignored%27–junior-doctor-warnings.html

It comes as the Government announced that £77 million will be spent over the next three years as part of a national stroke strategy, unveiled last year.

Ministers said that every local health authority in England should appoint a dedicated stroke care coordinator to support stroke survivors and their carers.

But a report by The Health Foundation, an independent charity which seeks to promote good practice within the NHS, and seen by The Times, concludes that “stroke services are still not good enough”.

It shows that less than half of patients in England (43 per cent) receive a brain imaging CT scan within 24 hours of suffering a stroke. This is despite national guidelines which state this is required for all patients who have suffered a major blood clot or bleeding in the brain, to be given a brain scan within three hours, or one hour after arriving at hospital.

There are nearly 900,000 people in England living with the consequences of a stroke, and it is the third biggest cause of death in the UK. In England alone there are more than 110,000 strokes each year, and it is the leading cause of long-term severe disability in adults.

The report adds that Britain lags behind other major Western countries in deaths due to cerebrovascular disease — a disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain, which often leads to a stroke.

The UK achieved a 16 per cent fall in mortality between 1997-2004, whereas Germany saw more than double (33 per cent) this reduction during the same period.

The charity is funding a NHS programme in the North West of England, which aims to boost the number of people who could survive a stroke by 30 per cent by 2010, and increase the number of stroke survivors walking out of hospital without a long-term disability. The programme is being run in partnership with the Stroke Association and the Royal College of Physicians.

But the foundation’s report also stressed the importance of preventative checks and treatments, suggesting that as many as 69 per cent of strokes in inner London could be prevented by prior screening and reductions in blood pressure, treating abnormal heart rhythms, stopping smoking and prescribing statins to at risk patients.

Bread and cereal manufacturers could also prevent 8,000 strokes a year in England by reducing their salt content, it suggests.

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3889634.ece

She added that the government’s change of heart – which is subject to parliamentary approval – was part of a “relentless drive”.

Ms Smith told MPs: “There is a compelling case for us to act now, rather than risk the future health of young people.

In its report, Cannabis: Classification And Public Health, the advisory council described cannabis as a “significant public health issue”.

But it said it should still remain a class C drug, as the risks were not as serious as those of class B substances, such as amphetamines and barbiturates.

The report said the evidence suggested a “probable, but weak, causal link between psychotic illness, including schizophrenia, and cannabis use”.

However, in the population as a whole, it played only a “modest role” in the development of these conditions.

Council chairman Sir Michael Rawlings told BBC Radio 4′s World at One: “The strength of things like skunk hasn’t really changed very much over the last few years but it’s now more widely used… The question of potency is a very complex area.”

Sir Michael added: “The government may want to take other matters into account. That’s their right. They are the government.”

In its report the council called for a campaign to reduce the use of cannabis, particularly focusing on young people.

From:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7386889.stm

Health Direct notes that once again labour dithers over another dilemma. One which ignores there own advisers and the science.

On August 02, 2006 Health Direct posted: Risks of taking drugs compared- Scientific review of dangers of drugtaking- Drugs, the real deal

Health Direct reproduced the first ranking based upon scientific evidence of harm to both individuals and society. It was devised by government advisers – then ignored by labour ministers because of its controversial findings.

The analysis was carried out by David Nutt, a senior member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and Colin Blakemore, the chief executive of the Medical Research Council. Copies of the report have been submitted to the Home Office, which has failed to act on the conclusions.

Warnings about the dangers of antibiotic overuse started to emerge from laboratories, but because relatively few patients were affected and nobody knew what to do about it, the situation was ignored. Antibiotics continued to be consumed in ever-growing quantities by sick humans and farm animals alike.

The problem took off in 1991, when Britain contributed its own supercharged strain to the world lexicon of multi-drug-resistant superbugs. MRSA-16 first appeared in Northamptonshire, rapidly infecting 400 patients and 27 staff in three hospitals.

Within 18 months it had been reported in 135 more hospitals. Nobody knows how it spread. Along with another British strain, MRSA-15, it went on to infect patients around the world, a pattern that continues.

A meticulous Health Protection Agency study, mapping how the new strains popped up unexpectedly in new hospitals, was published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology in 2004. But it was too long after the event to shed any light on how the infection had carried. Now research funding is focused on firefighting – casting around for ways to damp down the effects of the pathogens.

It is not just MRSA that is sweeping across Britain like a plague.

Streptococcus, enterococcus and Escherichia coli (E coli) are among a host of bugs emerging in resistant forms and causing everything from pneumonia to tuberculosis, bone destruction and lethal damage to the heart. In addition, we are facing “hyper-virulent” new strains of the bacteria Clostridium difficile (C diff), which have colonised the sites left free by the effect of antibiotics, which kill off many harmless bacterial colonies in their path.

Although C diff is not resistant to treatment, its spores linger indefinitely and, until recently, NHS staff were largely unaware of how to kill them. Consequently, it is the biggest killer of the current superbugs.

In 2006 it was mentioned on the death certificates of 6,480 people, against 1,652 deaths officially attributed to MRSA. However, these figures are recognised to be underestimates, as many superbug deaths are never identified.

Mandatory surveillance of MRSA bloodstream infections is a recent innovation, the number of people carrying it with no symptoms is not recorded, and the formal collection of figures for death and disease associated with C diff (which causes unstoppable diarrhoea or gut perforation) only began in April 2007. The government estimates the annual cost of treatment for such cases to be over £1 billion.

Officially, the total number of MRSA infections is 7,000-8,000 a year, while C diff is running at an annual 55,600 cases. Many experts believe the real total for all superbug infections is nearer 300,000 – how many are fatal is believed to be vastly higher than the official figures suggest. There is no way of knowing the true figure, as relatively few people are tested.

Meanwhile, a variety of new resistant pathogens are waiting in the wings. In September 2006, a variation of Staphylococcus aureus that produces a toxin called Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) claimed its first British victims. Since then, anxiety over this threat has escalated. The pathogen selectively attacks the young rather than the old; it gets into bones and joints, causing crippling damage.

A multi-drug-resistant version of a common food-poisoning bug, ESBL (extended-spectrum beta-lactamase) E coli, is also causing anxiety. First identified in the 1980s, it has spread steadily to cause an average of 30,000 cases of blood poisoning and urinary-tract infections a year.

Although it has officially been blamed for 57 deaths so far, the true total is believed to be many thousands. Government scientists think the source is meat and milk, colonised by superbugs as a result of overuse of agricultural antibiotics.

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3582299.ece

Health Direct laments the disaster that is labour’s superbug strategy. Which causes between 3 and 4 times the number of deaths compared to UK traffic accidents.

NICE, the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure, had acted unfairly in refusing to allow Eisai and Pfizer full access to a computer model used to assess the cost-effectiveness of Aricept, an Alzheimer’s drug, the court ruled.

NICE had decided that the drug should not be prescribed on the NHS to patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease.

But Eisai and Pfizer, which market Aricept in a partnership, were disadvantaged in appealing against this guidance by NICE’s refusal to let them have a “fully executable” version of the economic model it had used.

Had the companies had the full version, they could have tested it using a variety of assumptions and be in a better position to challenge the guidance. The Court of Appeal decision means that NICE must now make such a version available.

Lord Justice Richards, giving the ruling of the appeal judges, said NICE had supplied a spreadsheet of the economic model used to evaluate the drugs and had refused an Eisai request for full details.

“The view I have come to is that, notwithstanding NICE’s considered position to the contrary (to which in itself I am prepared to give some weight), procedural fairness does require release of the fully executable version of the model.”

Refusal to do so, said the judge, put drugs companies at “a significant disadvantage” in challenging the reliability of the model.

He allowed the appeal by Eisai, who will now receive the full details and make new representations to NICE, which will then make a new appraisal of the drugs.

NICE is now considering whether to appeal to the House of Lords. It has always believed that the full details of the computer programs are the intellectual property of the academic teams who developed them, and who are entitled to have them protected.

Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, said: “We will be considering very carefully the findings and the implications for the time it takes us to provide advice to patients and the NHS on the use of new treatments.

“The ruling will increase the complexity of our drug appraisals in some cases and they may take longer as a result. In the meantime, and in accordance with the judges’ ruling, we will provide Eisai with an executable version of the economic model used in our appraisal, so that they comment on it.”

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3854121.ece

Health Direct notes that the ruling – the first time that NICE has been successfully challenged in court – could open the door to other companies seeking access to the economic models on the same basis. NICE often uses computer models developed for it by outside teams.

The ruling will not make Aricept available to Alzheimer’s sufferers. It will simply enable Eisai and Pfizer to review the model and see if doing so reveals any flaws in NICE’s reasoning. If it does, they will be able to appeal against the guidance.

Neil Hunt, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Society, said: “The decision is a damming indictment of the fundamentally flawed process used by NICE to deny people with Alzheimer’s disease access to drug treatments.

The organisations, which include Age Concern England, the Local Government Association and MENCAP, have also criticised the Department’s decision to raise the allowance paid to care home residents by a mere 70p.

The PEA is all that state-funded care home residents are allowed to keep for spending on day-to-day items such as newspapers and toiletries. Under regulations recently approved by Parliament, it has been uprated by just 70p to £21.15 per week.

This has also provoked anger among MPs. Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg MP has led Parliamentary opposition by signing a Commons motion ‘praying against’ the regulations introducing the increase, alongside a number of Front Bench colleagues.

Following a concerted campaign over the last year to highlight the inadequacy of the PEA, the Department of Health pledged to consult on increases to the payment. However, this promise has not been kept, prompting the organisations to take the step of joining together to write a strongly-worded letter to Ivan Lewis. In the letter, they call on him to honour the Department’s pledge to consult and announce an acceptable level for the PEA in this year’s Pre-Budget Report.

The organisations who signed the letter are Age Concern England, Counsel and Care, Help the Aged, the Local Government Association, MENCAP, National Association of Financial Assessment Officers, NHFA Care Fees Advice and the Residents and Relatives Association.2

The letter states:

“From our discussions with older people, we know this is an issue they are deeply concerned about. We therefore hope you will take the opportunity provided by the forthcoming public consultation on social care to seek the views of older people about this. We would then hope the Government could be in a position to announce an acceptable level for the PEA by the time of the Pre-Budget Report.”

Signed by:
* Gordon Lishman OBE, Director General , Age Concern England
* Paul Cann, Director of Policy and External Relations, Help the Aged
* Dame Jo Williams DBE, Chief Executive, MENCAP
* Philip Spiers, Managing Director, NHFA Care Fees Advice
* Stephen Burke, Chief Executive, Counsel and Care
* Anne McDonald, Programme Director Community Wellbeing, Local Government Association
* Gillian Dalley, Chief Executive, Relatives and Residents Association
* The National Association of Financial Assessment Officers
From:
http://www.ageconcern.org.uk/AgeConcern/62E9AC0FB0C1434B80C62B771AF7C1EF.asp

Dr Ian Gibson, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on cancer, warned that increasing numbers of British people were purchasing such products, and urged the government to do all it could to highlight the problem and block sales from the websites.

The proliferation of such sites was “an increasing problem which started in the United States and is growing almost daily here,” he said.

DCA is a cheap off-patent chemical which was the subject of various largely unpromising trials for different diseases dating back around 20 years. It came back to prominence after research on early animal laboratory work by two scientists in Canada was published in the Cancer Cell journal in January last year.

The research by Dr Evangelos Michelakis and his colleague Dr Sebastian Bonnet showed regression of several types of cancer tumour, including brain, breast and lung, with no effect on healthy tissue.

Their theory is that DCA restores the mitochondrial function, responsible for energy production, in cells damaged by cancers, allowing them to self-destruct and decreasing tumour growth. If they are right, they may have hit on a new approach to cancer treatment.

Subsequently, Jim Tassano, who runs a pest-control business in California, began to manufacture and sell DCA to all-comers on a website. The US authorities have attempted to stop a California-based website selling the drug, but the Guardian was easily able to obtain a tub of the powdered chemical, with a recommendation to try it with caffeine from strong tea and coffee. Tassano says he only wants to help people who have run out of options.

One of the scientists researching DCA’s effect on cancerous cells is appalled. “The concern about this drug is that at this stage it is given to people who are very sick. Unsupervised, it could kill you,” said Dr Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta who carried out tests in animal brain, lung and breast tumours and is now moving into human trials.

Tassano said in an email to the Guardian: “I am reluctant to speak publicly due to FDA [Food and Drug Administration] issues … They have made it clear that they do not like high profile people. I am in a tough spot running both the information site on DCA and being involved with it economically as well. If the FDA takes action against me, it will be a big setback for DCA and cancer patients. I hope you understand.”

The sale of DCA underscores how difficult it is for authorities to stop people purchasing potentially dangerous drugs on the internet. Gibson said he was very concerned that patients were being given false advice and erroneous information about drugs that had not been tested on humans. “I’m calling for these websites to be researched by the Department of Health and closed down instantly.

“We need to start a campaign to get the message out there that these sites are no good. If need be, we should be talking to the cancer institutes and charities in America to see what pressure they can bring to have the sites closed. But it’s a very difficult thing to do. People will always turn to sites like these when they are desperate, so we need to make sure they know the facts.”

Michelakis is moving as fast as he can into human clinical trials that will start to give some real answers. “The people who decide to sell this are like drug dealers. They are targeting the most vulnerable people you can imagine,” he said.

Tassano and others believe those with terminal cancer should be allowed to take what risks they choose. Most doctors think patients should take calculated risks only within clinical trials, where they can be properly looked after if things go wrong.

Two doctors in Canada have broken ranks. Akhbar Khan, a GP, and his wife Humaira Khan, whose background is in public health, offer DCA at their Toronto clinic. They have been criticised by other doctors and regulatory bodies, but are allowed to use the drug because, although DCA is not approved as a cancer treatment, it is licensed for metabolic diseases.

Most of their patients are from Canada and the US, but some have made the trip from the UK.

“We haven’t seen it cure anyone. It has prolonged life and given a better quality of life,” said Dr Humaira Khan. “There’s also the psychological aspect: the family feels they are doing something.”

The couple are adding other unproven drugs to their repertoire as they hear about them. “The patients out there are researching like crazy and finding all sorts of things on the internet. They bring me lots of literature,” said Dr Akhbar Khan.

On the basis of a few patients who said they had positive results from DCA and drank a lot of black tea and coffee, Tassano suggested that people try “the caffeine protocol”.

Yet he now warns on the site that the idea has resulted in death for some patients. “We are seeing very severe responses to the DCA-caffeine protocol in brain cancer patients. We have heard reports of a couple of people who were on high doses of DCA that started drinking caffeine and had very severe reactions: seizures and death followed,” he said.

Dr Kat Arney of Cancer Research UK said the scenario around DCA was “probably the worst thing possible”. “Cancer patients are taking this drug with no idea if it is safe, or at what dosage. It could make them very ill indeed.”

The Department of Health said responsibility for websites selling medicines rested with the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority (MHRA). The MHRA in a statement said websites operating illegally in the UK had been closed down and said it was making efforts to alert consumers to the dangers of buying any medicines through the web.

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/28/health.cancer

Health Direct points out that there is a much easier way to check the validity of medical websites- the HON http://www.healthdirect.co.uk/2008/04/health-direct-wins-international-health.html

We comply with the HONcode standard for trustworthy health information: verify here.

Within two days he had suffered septic shock and total organ failure. Despite treatment with huge volumes of antibiotics, he was not expected to survive.

Daniel had been struck by Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), a toxin that combines with MRSA, the methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus bacterium that causes thousands of infections in hospitals.

The PVL-MRSA infection can get into the skeleton, where it is particularly hard to treat with drugs. Instead, doctors have to remove infected bone.

Daniel was in a coma for a month and has had to undergo five operations to scrape out the infected bone in his leg and hip. He is now largely confined to a wheelchair. “One day he was playing happily, and the next day he couldn’t see, speak or move,” said Roberts, 33. “The doctors didn’t know what to say to me, they didn’t know what was happening.

“They tried drug after drug and nothing seemed to work. It was a terrifying experience that you would not wish on anyone. We still don’t know how much the bones will grow back or how well he will recover.”

David Hunt, a children’s orthopaedic surgeon at St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, said the infection had eaten away the bone in Daniel’s hip and leg.

“The most worrying element of Daniel’s story is that although he complained that his leg began to hurt after the fall, there was no sign of broken skin, bruising or other damage to allow the bacteria into his bloodstream,” said Hunt. “It is very alarming. We don’t know enough about these organisms. They are appearing in new forms and what happened here is going to happen more frequently.”

The phenomenon of PVL combining with MRSA was first identified in the United States several years ago. The Sunday Times established that reports of cases in Britain have occurred from the south coast to Birmingham.

They include a six-year-old girl left brain-damaged after she fell off her scooter and contracted the infection in her shin bone, from where it spread throughout her body; a boy of nine crippled after a graze playing football; a girl of 12 who fell while dancing; and a 13-year-old who banged his leg on the side of his bed, suffering similar near-fatal infections.

One 11-year-old in a boarding school did not appear to have had an accident that could have led to the bacteria taking hold.

Specialists in the condition accuse the labour government of ignoring warnings about the seriousness of PVL-MRSA, failing to mount adequate infection surveillance and blocking the use of a costly treatment to tackle it.

Professor Richard Wise, a leading microbiologist, says he warned a labour government health minister three years ago of the threat. Wise said the minister told civil servants: “This needs to be sorted, get it sorted.”

Yet the special advisory committee on antimicrobial resistance, which Wise chaired, was later disbanded, and a commitment to provide £250,000 to study the bug was not honoured. “It does seem strange to set up specialist advisory committees and then take no notice of the advice they give,” said Wise last week.

A deputation of three experts from the Intensive Care Society and specialist infectious diseases societies met officials to try to persuade them to change guidelines on the treatment of PVL. At present the use of intravenous immunoglobulin, a blood product that costs £2,500 a treatment, is not approved by the NHS. Doctors say it can save lives.

“We are bracing ourselves for much more of this,” said Nick Clarke, professor of paediatric orthopaedic surgery at Southampton University, whose team treated the case of the boarding school child and another nine-year-old victim.

“MRSA has not only mutated to get round antibiotics but it has also picked up this PVL toxin, which even seems to change once it has infected someone. There are grave fears about this in the paediatric orthopaedic community worldwide.”

A number of other cases, particularly of young adults, have involved PVL pneumonia, a “necrotising” infection that can eat away a fatal level of lung tissue within 48 hours.

One victim was Kirstie Bristow, 23, of Torpoint, Cornwall, who contracted it while pregnant two years ago. Luckily an Australian locum doctor recognised the symptoms and arranged emergency treatment. She was unconscious for three weeks and given only a 50% chance of survival. “I am so lucky to be alive,” she said recently. “It’s important people know what to look for and act quickly.”

Marina Morgan, a consultant microbiologist in Exeter, Devon, said the Health Protection Agency (HPA), had no idea of the real level of risk: “I have had eight cases of PVL pneumonia in Exeter alone and three of them have been fatal,” she said. “It is worrying and it will get worse.”

The latest HPA figures show the number of recorded PVL infections DOUBLED from 224 in 2005 to 496 in 2006. A Department of Health spokesman said research on the prevalence of PVL was now being planned.

According to other figures to be reported on Panorama on BBC1 tonight, 10 times as many elderly patients die from the superbug clostridium difficile in Britain as in any other country in the world. The health department denies the comparison.

From:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3822582.ece

Throughout his time in hospital, his wife Amanda desperately tried to alert nursing staff and hospital authorities to the things that were going wrong with her husband.

Every time she alerted them to a new horror, they would promise that nothing like that would ever happen again – but every time things got worse.

Finally, an invalid deprived of his independence, his legs, his ability to communicate and everything he enjoyed, Paul Steane took his own life.

Inexperienced doctors, overworked nurses, filthy wards, inadequate care – all of these were guilty for Paul Steane’s death.

Hospital management denied all responsibility, claiming key parts of Paul’s medical records had been ‘lost’. But a nurse, outraged at what was happening, sent Amanda copies of the ‘missing’ records and the police began to investigate.

http://www.nhs-whocares.com/who_cares.html

Health Direct finds this a truly moving and horrifying book. It should be compulsory reading for all the hopeless bureaucrats who run our health service and for the labour politicians who ruin it.

Projections made in 2005 that numbers of people covered by private health insurance could tumble by 15 per cent as NHS waiting times fell have not come to pass.

But neither have there been parallel improvements to private sector care that some analysts hoped would lower the cost of treatment and cover.

Figures published by the Association of British Insurers on Tuesday showed a 1.6 per cent rise in the number of subscribers to all forms of private medical cover, with the number of policies exceeding 4m for the first time.

The number of people paying personally for a policy continued its long-term fall in the face of rising premiums, down almost 300,000 from a peak in the mid-1990s to just over 1m.

But company-paid schemes grew by 2.3 per cent. With their bigger buying power, these have 3m subscribers, made up of cover purchased from insurers and cover from company trust schemes that insurers merely administer.

Using a standard multiplier of people per policy, the ABI estimates more than 7m people have at least some form of private health cover, although not all of those hold comprehensive policies.

Philip Blackburn of the analysts Laing and Buisson said the figures showed that private insurance “has remained robust in the face of NHS competition”.

“It is a stable market that is neither rocking nor rolling, but it shows that the big investments in the NHS, with shorter waiting times, have not had the impact on the private sector that some feared.”

With both the number of insured patients and those who pay for treatment out of their own pocket holding up well, the figures help explain recent statements by some of the leading private hospital groups that they no longer see an expanded NHS as “core” to their business strategy.

However, Mr Blackburn added that the opportunity presented by shorter NHS waits and greater involvement of the private sector in treating NHS patients appeared to be slipping away, and with it the possibility that this would lead to lower premiums for private patients.

The theory was that, as private hospitals adjusted their business models to deal with large volumes of NHS patients, their greater efficiency would lead in turn to lower costs.

“Some of the hospitals have restructured and are more efficient,” Mr Blackburn said. “You would have thought some of that would have shown up in premiums. But very little of it has so far.”

Premiums still appeared to be rising at between 5 and 10 per cent a year, he said. That was lower than on some occasions in the past, but still well ahead of inflation.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/275ba120-10c2-11dd-b8d6-0000779fd2ac.html

Health Direct notes that these figures for private health insurance shows that labour three tier healthcare system is still alive and kicking.

New figures released showed C.Difficile infection cases had gone down but there were still nearly 10,000 cases in those aged over 65.

And while MRSA cases have dropped over the past year they rose slightly in the last quarter of 2007.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in February showed a huge rise in the number of death certificates mentioning C diff.

In England and Wales, there was a 72% rise, from 3,757 mentions in 2005 to 6,480 in 2006.

Death rates involving C diff increased by 77% among males and 66% among females between 2005 and 2006.

Rates went up from 37 to 65.5 per million males, and from 38.6 to 64.2 per million females.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “From start to finish, Labour’s attitude to hospital infections has been woefully misguided. For years even their own advisers have been telling them that the way to tackle the problem is to identify infected patients as early as possible and then isolate them to make sure others don’t catch it.

“But Labour have ignored the experts and Gordon Brown has stubbornly chosen to put time, money and effort into a ‘deep clean’ which made a good headline but wasn’t backed up by any evidence.

“These figures are for the period when the ‘deep clean’ started. If it had been effective we would be expecting to start to see a decrease in the number of infections, not another rise.”

The new data shows there were 1,087 cases of MRSA during October to December 2007.

This represents a 0.6% increase on the previous quarter, when 1,080 cases were reported to the Health Protection Agency.

In the same quarter in 2006 there were 1,543 cases.

Meanwhile, figures for the bug Clostridium difficile (C diff) showed an 8% drop, to 9,872 cases in patients aged 65 and over between October and December 2007 compared with the previous quarter.

However, the HPA warned that changes to how NHS trusts report their C diff figures could have influenced the result, as some data may be incomplete.

The HPA stressed it could not be confident that the apparent reduction was an accurate reflection of the current situation.

Dr Duckworth, who is head of the HPA’s healthcare-associated infection and antimicrobial resistance department, said: “Over the last year cases of MRSA bloodstream infection have been steadily falling.

“We would obviously like to have seen the trend continued in this quarter and hope that ongoing surveillance will show that this plateau is not indicative of a levelling trend, but we need to see next quarter’s figures.

“The NHS has faced a great challenge in turning around the seemingly unstoppable rise in MRSA bloodstream infections that we saw throughout the 1990s.

“The substantial decreases seen in recent quarters clearly demonstrate the huge efforts made by our NHS colleagues to combat these infections.

“Although the current figures indicate a plateau, variations in the rate of decrease over time are not unexpected and are not necessarily a cause for alarm.”

Professor Peter Borriello, director of the HPA’s centre for infections, said: “The reduction of healthcare-associated infections is a big challenge throughout the world.

“The Agency continues to support the hard work of our NHS colleagues in combating these infections and the never-ending battle to fight all types of infection.”

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/24/nmrsa124.xml

Health Direct notes that once again labour’s dithering is literally killing people with preventable early deaths at the same time as wasting yet more taxpayers’ money.

Guidance issued to NHS doctors by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) claims that the drug Tarceva is not a good use of “scarce resources”. However, it will remain available in Scotland.

It is estimated that 2,300 patients in England could benefit from the drug, which adds on average three months to life expectancy and costs around £1,700 a month per patient.

Nick Thatcher, professor of medical oncology at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, said: “Nice has undervalued the benefits to a patient and in doing so, has undermined lung cancer specialists’ ability to do what is best for those in our care.”

Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said he was “disappointed” and that the drug “can give some patients extra time which can be extremely valuable”.

Roche, the makers of Tarceva, said it would appeal against the decision.

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/25/ncancer125.xml

Health Direct points out that once again NICE- the National Institute for Curbing Expenditure is once again increasing labour’s health postcode lottery.

Officials across the public sector, including permanent secretaries and chief executives of NHS trusts, are to be forced to take data protection “much more seriously” under proposals due to be laid out by Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary.

In the coming weeks Mr O’Donnell is expected to present the findings of a report on data security. The report was commissioned by the Prime Minister in the wake of the loss of 25 million child benefit claimant records by the HMRC in November.

The Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, who has seen a draft of the report, said that the new measures focused on “issues of accountability and governance”, indicating that the heads of departments would be personally responsible in the event of serious data breaches.

“It has to be the likes of chief executives (of NHS trusts) and permanent secretaries who are held accountable when things go wrong,” Mr Thomas told a security conference in London. “They can’t simply make assumptions that everything is in the hands of the ‘techies’”.

Details of the tougher penalties for information losses emerged as the Information Commissioner’s Office said it had received reports of 94 further data breaches – affecting both the public and private sectors – since the HMRC incident.

Nearly a third of the breaches in the public sector, which ranged from “the minor to the very serious”, Mr Thomas said, were in central government, while a fifth affected the NHS. Of the breaches in the private sector, more than 50 per cent were in financial institutions.

The ICO is due to begin using new powers to ‘spot check’ both public and private sector organisations in the event that a data breach is suspected later this year.

“There are going to be new requirements for Whitehall departments and new guidance for the public sector at large,” Mr Thomas said. “It’s not just about data security. We need to ask a whole range of questions, such as why so much information is being collected. Why is it being retained for so long? Why are laptops which hold the information not being encrypted? And why are such laptops being left in the backs of cars?”

The BERR report, which was produced in conjunction with Price Waterhouse Coopers, the financial services firm, found that two thirds of British companies did nothing to prevent confidential information leaving the company premises on USB sticks and discs, and that four fifths of companies which had had computers stolen did not encrypt their hard discs.

More than half of companies now also allowed their employees to access the company database remotely, the report found, and 13 per cent had detected “unauthorised outsiders” in their networks. Those companies that did allow remote access to their network were more than twice as likely to experience a security incident.

Andrew Beard, an information security director at Price Waterhouse Coopers and co-author of the report, said: “Senior management is now certainly beginning to take security seriously, but the seriousness of breaches is as high as it’s ever been.”

From:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3797278.ece

Health Direct thinks that this new spin is akin to shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

The Tory leader warned that Labour’s plans for health care could lead to the closure of one in five GP surgeries around the country.

Mr Cameron said local residents should have the final say on whether surgeries should be replaced and urged GPs to fight the changes, signing up to a petition opposing the planned reforms. Polyclinics, conceived by Lord Darzi, a health minister and consultant surgeon, will combine GP services with nursing and social care on one site.

The Government insists they will create more choice for patients and greater access to specialist care.

Opponents fear they will leave some patients with long journeys and destroy the personal relationship between patients and family doctors. In a speech to a health think-tank in London, Mr Cameron said amalgamating as many as 1,700 GP surgeries would damage the fabric of local communities.

He said: “Labour has already tried to bring about the end of the district general hospital. Now they are trying to abolish the family doctor service. Communities which have lost their post office, their local shops, their local police station, are going to lose their doctor.”

People including the elderly, those with small children and those with long-term conditions would be worst affected, Mr Cameron said.

“Those are the people least able to get to a polyclinic, and least comfortable in a large impersonal institution. They like to rely on the doctor they know, at the end of their street, often in a building not much bigger than a house,” he said. “They have a human relationship with their GP that they simply won’t have with a member of staff at a polyclinic.”

Instead of “imposing” the clinics on communities, Mr Cameron said ministers should make the changes subject to binding local consultation. He said: “Where they occur, they should occur naturally, as the voluntary combination of free agents, not as the latest structural reorganisation of the NHS.

He also urged GPs to join an independent campaign against the polyclinics plan. The petition, drawn up by the think-tank “2020health” in consultation with the Tories, calls general practice the “foundation of the NHS” and says doctors object to “being forced into polyclinics against our will”.

The petition also includes a demand for freedom to determine surgery opening hours.

“We want to work in partnership with GPs, not in conflict with them as this Government is doing,” Mr Cameron said. “So I urge GPs to sign up to this petition and ensure that the next Conservative government has the backing of the profession to modernise general practice in a way that works for the staff and patients of the NHS.”

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, last night accused the Opposition of backing a “free-for-all” that would end a recent agreement for more surgeries to open in the evenings and at weekends.

“This is an astonishing admission by the Conservatives. They are now supporting a free-for-all on opening hours which would see an end to the evening and weekend opening which has just been secured,” he said.

“Far from diminishing primary care services we are enhancing them, but it seems that the Tories are more interested in ingratiating themselves with certain elements of the profession than they are in improving access for the public.”

From:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/22/nclinics122.xml

Health Direct points out that every new major spin that labour dreams up tend to turn to ashes- just remember tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime…….