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The new figures come after the tragic death of Girls Aloud star Sarah HardingThree weeks after Girls Aloud singer Sarah Harding’s death, new figures have revealed how long people in Cambridgeshire are waiting for breast cancer treatment. NHS targets say most people urgently referred by their GP for suspected breast cancer should see a specialist within 14 days. Once they have been diagnosed, patients should start treatment within two months (62 days) of being referred. However, many people in England with suspected breast cancer are not being assessed and treated within these timescales – with chances of being seen quickly...

A new health and social care tax will be introduced across the UK to pay for reforms to the care sector and NHS funding in England. Boris Johnson said it would raise £12bn a year, designed to tackle the health backlog caused by the Covid pandemic and to bolster social care. He accepted the tax broke a manifesto pledge, but said the "global pandemic was in no-one's manifesto". However, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the plan was a "sticking plaster". Leaders in social care also warned the money was "nowhere near enough" and would not address current problems. The...

NHS England has instructed GPs to cancel all tests except those that are ‘clinically urgent’ until mid-September, while warning the shortage of blood test tubes is due to worsen over the coming weeks. Earlier this month, GPs were told to suspend non-essential blood tests amid a worsening shortage of test tubes sparked by soaring demand and ‘UK border challenges’. But in a letter sent to GPs today, NHS England clarified its guidance on reducing test tube demand, saying that practices must stop all blood tests until 17 September unless ‘clinically urgent’. Tests that can go ahead include those required for...

In Great Britain, a group of hospitals has instructed midwives in their maternity departments to use different terms when treating transgender patients in order to be more “gender-inclusive,” substituting “chestfeeding” for “breastfeeding” and replacing “breastmilk” with ““human milk” or “breast/chestmilk” or “milk from the feeding mother or parent.” “Terms like ‘chestfeeding’ and ‘human milk’ are being introduced at an NHS trust in a bid to boost inclusivity,” Bristol Live reports. “Staff have been asked to use gender-neutral language alongside – not instead of – traditional terms to ensure that all groups are represented.” LBC reported of Brighton and Sussex University...

Britain should introduce the world’s first tax on sugary and salty food, a report recommends today. The “snack tax” could add £3.4 billion a year to families’ shopping bills, with a 60p Mars bar costing 9p more. With 56 million people currently living in England, it means £60 per year will be added to each person’s food bill on average — £240 for a family of four. The money should be used to pay for GPs to prescribe fruit, vegetables and cookery classes on the NHS to help prevent obesity and ill health, the Government-commissioned review says. The radical proposals...

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock has appeared to suggest that people who refuse to get the vaccine may be banned from using the National Health Service. This is excellent news for at least two good reasons. First, it reassuringly demonstrates that just occasionally in his life Prime Minister Boris Johnson is capable of telling the truth. We now know with absolute certainty that Johnson was entirely honest and accurate in his assertion, in an old text message leaked by former Special Adviser Dominic Cummings, that Hancock is ‘totally —ing hopeless’. Second, it might possibly make so-called vaccine ‘refuseniks’ a lot...

An online trend that involves using tiny magnets as fake tongue piercings has led the NHS to call for them to be banned amid people swallowing them.Ingesting more than one of them can be life-threatening and cause significant damage within hours.In England, 65 children have required urgent surgery after swallowing magnets in the last three years.The NHS issued a patient safety alert earlier this month and is now calling for the small metal balls to be banned.It said the "neodymium or 'super strong' rare-earth magnets are sold as toys, decorative items and fake piercings, and are becoming increasingly popular".It added...

Mum Kate McGinley, 35, has a condition which is causing her brain to be pulled down into her spinal cordWhen she was a child, Kate McGinley had a party trick which would make all her friends and family squirm. Her ability to stretch and extend her body like a contortionist meant that she could dislocate her shoulders, hips and fingers on command. But little did she know that her unusual talent was being caused by a rare, life-threatening disease which would later cause her years of pain and suffering. Kate was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome (EDS), a condition which...

The NHS is at risk of being overwhelmed within three weeks in parts of the country, Britain’s four chief medical officers warned last night as hospital admissions overtook their first-wave peak. In a statement raising Britain’s Covid-19 alert level to five, Professor Chris Whitty and his counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said that they were not confident that the service could handle a further sustained rise in cases. Analysis showed that Britain was on course for 100,000 deaths by early February as another record number of infections led to official warnings that “the lives of our friends and...

The number of people waiting more than a year to start hospital treatment in England in October was higher than any month since 2008, figures show. There were 162,888 patients still yet to start treatment in October 2020, the highest number since 2008. A year earlier, the number having to wait more than 52 weeks to start treatment stood at just 1,321. The latest figures from NHS England also show A&E admissions down 31% on the previous year. A total of 1.5 million people went to A&E in November this year - down from 2.1 million in November 2019. NHS...

Allergic Reactions In UK Healthcare Staff Prompt New COVID Vaccine WarningsBritish health regulators have issued a warning that people with a history of “significant” allergic reactions should not receive its newly launch Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.The warning comes in response to two National Health Service (NHS) workers who received the COVID-19 vaccine on December 8th experiencing allergic reactions. The two individuals, who developed “anaphylactoid reaction” shortly after injection, are now recovering. The precautions come from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and note that anyone who has a history of “significant” allergic reactions to medicines, food, or vaccines should refuse...

NHS waiting times have spiralled to their highest level in 12 years, official statistics revealed today. The number of people in England forced to wait at least a year for routine treatment rocketed to almost 140,000 in September — the largest backlog since 2008. It marks a 100-fold surge in the waiting list compared to the same month last year, when 1,300 patients were put on hold for more than 12 months. NHS figures today also revealed cancer referrals hit a record low, with almost 30,000 suspected to be waiting more than two weeks between an urgent GP referral and...

National Health Service patients in England waiting more than one year for non-coronavirus treatment is at its highest since 2008, with an NHS report admitting it was likely a result of the UK’s response to the pandemic. Figures released on Thursday revealed that in September the number of people waiting more than 52 weeks for the start of treatment was 139,545 — compared to 1,305 the same month last year.

Patients will need to be seen by non-doctors including “social care navigators”, “physician associates” and “nurse practitioners” to clear the lockdown backlog, a medical leader warns. Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard predicted the waiting lists of the past five months will continue to rise unless the NHS radically alters how it delivers care. The chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges said patients will need to get used to having appointments with physician associates, who do just two years’ medical training, and care navigators, who are often receptionists. Nurses will also have to take on doctors’ roles. There are nearly four...

NHS staff are being given hydroxychloroquine to see if the anti-malaria drug stops coronavirus. Healthcare workers from Brighton and Oxford, who are all in contact with Covid-19 patients, will be part of a global trial to test the effects of the drug. It comes after US President Donald Trump faced a backlash this week after revealing he had been taking hydroxychloroquine, despite warnings it might be unsafe. The first UK participants in the global trial are being enrolled today at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals and the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. They will be given either hydroxychloroquine or...

The government is using the coronavirus pandemic to transfer key public health duties from the NHS and other state bodies to the private sector without proper scrutiny, critics have warned. Doctors, campaign groups, academics and MPs raised the concerns about a “power grab” after it emerged on Monday that Serco was in pole position to win a deal to supply 15,000 call-handlers for the government’s tracking and tracing operation.

On Wednesday, the Royal Papworth Hospital in the city of Cambridge in the UK received a unique donation — the personal ventilator of world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking’s family made the donation to help the hospital fight COVID-19. “After our father passed away, we returned all the medical equipment he used that belonged to the NHS but there were some items which he bought for himself. We are now passing them to the NHS in the hope they will help in the fight against COVID-19,” said Lucy Hawking, the daughter of Stephen Hawking. […] Lucy Hawking said that the care...

A medical ventilator to help Covid-19 patients breathe has been granted regulatory approval, meaning hundreds could be rolled out to hospitals from next week. Penlon’s ESO2 device, developed under the codename Project Oyster, will become the first model to get the green light from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), with an announcement expected as soon as Thursday. Formal approval comes amid mounting concern that tens of thousands of ventilators ordered by the government are still awaiting regulatory clearance. The length of the process has stoked fears about the readiness of the NHS for a surge in patients...

Most of the field of candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination at one point signed on to the idea of Medicare for All, a compromise proposal by Bernie Sanders for universal health care coverage. In a pandemic, people panic, and seek security. Many may think that this event proves the need for universal, government-run coverage. What would that look like in reality? How would Medicare for All handle the coronavirus pandemic?Luckily, we have a real world example that is dealing with coronavirus today: Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS). NHS has long been known for its tradeoff between...

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's spokesman has rejected President Donald Trump's offer to help with Johnson's COVID-19 treatment. Trump on Monday offered to put Johnson's doctors in touch with unnamed companies working on coronavirus treatments. The prime minister's spokesman rejected the offer on Tuesday. "We're confident the prime minister is receiving the best possible care from the National Health Service," he said. "Any treatment he receives is a matter for his doctors."