By: Martha Linden, PA, The Independent
Tuesday, 4 November 2008

Nearly 4,000 new cases of mental health disorder were diagnosed last year among armed services personnel, according to figures published today.

Mental health statistics released by the Ministry of Defence showed 3,917 new cases of armed services personnel assessed to have a mental disorder in 2007 by the MoD’s department of community mental health.

A breakdown of the statistics showed that, in line with the first nine months of last year, there were no statistically significant differences in the rates of overall mental disorder between those who had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and those who had not deployed during the last quarter of 2007.

But the figures showed a significantly higher rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among those who had deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan compared with those who had not deployed to these countries.

By: Harriet Shawcross, PA, The Independent
Tuesday, 28 October 2008

A former head of the Islamic Medical Association sent a homophobic letter to a magazine for GPs, saying gay people needed the “stick of law to put them on the right path”, the General Medical Council heard today.

Dr Muhammad Siddiq was working as a GP at the Walsall Teaching Primary Care Trust when he wrote the letter to Pulse in July last year.

A GMC fitness to practise panel, in Manchester, heard Dr Siddiq’s letter read: “There is punishment and fine if you throw rubbish or filth on the streets, the gays are worse than the ordinary careless citizen, they are causing the spread of illness and they are the root cause of many sexually-transmitted diseases.

“They need neither sympathy nor help, what they need is the stick of law to put them on the right path.”

By: Nina Lakhani, The Independent
Monday, 27 October 2008

People with mental health problems will be driven into poverty by the introduction of a new benefit today, campaigners have warned.

Around half of applicants for the employment and support allowance are expected to be rejected because of much stricter rules, forcing thousands of people with mental health problems on to the much less generous job-seekers allowance, or into jobs they are unable to cope with and which could lead to a relapse in their conditions.

Thousands more will face tough new sanctions on the benefit which replaces incapacity benefit, if they fail to attend regular work-based activities and interviews. This could lead to benefits being withdrawn completely.

Experts say this fails to take into account the erratic nature of mental illness and could leave sick people destitute.

By: Nina Lakhani, The Independent
Sunday, 5 October 2008

Campaigners plan to use World Mental Health Day to highlight discrimination within the medical profession against some of its most vulnerable patients.

Daniel Galvin died of a heart attack in August. He was six stone overweight and had high blood pressure; his hair was falling out and he was incapacitated by trembling legs. He was 29.

Daniel’s family believe his symptoms, and his untimely death, were caused by side effects from the powerful psychiatric drugs he had been taking for 14 years. He is, they think, one of thousands of people with mental health problems who have died prematurely because their physical health was neglected.

Rufus May, a clinical psychologist, said yesterday: “The real tragedy about Daniel’s death is that it symbolises how little things have changed in psychiatry. Young lives are still being wasted because we fail to listen to people and simply prescribe powerful drugs with little regard for their physical well being.

By: PA, The Independent
Monday, 29 September 2008

Men will be able to get Viagra online without having to visit their GP, in what a pharmacy claims is the first reputable joint venture with a health website.

Lloydspharmacy and the website DrThom have teamed up to offer the service to men who fill in a questionnaire.

A GP from the DrThom website will analyse the questionnaire and diagnose any erectile problem before issuing an electronic prescription straight to Lloydspharmacy.

By: Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, The Independent
Friday, 26 September 2008

Almost one in five health trusts are delivering poor quality care outside normal office hours, the most comprehensive investigation into urgent and emergency services has concluded.

The Healthcare Commission also found that proportion of out-of-hours calls categorised as “urgent” varied from under 4 per cent to more than 32 per cent between services, “raising questions” over consistency.

Source: BMJ, 17 September 2008.

Before Robert Mayer, a GP and family therapist, died earlier this year of pancreatic cancer, he wrote about the cost of treating cancer on the NHS and why patients should be allowed to co-pay for expensive drugs. Read his personal view, as well as extracts from a diary he kept in the last few months of his life.

By: Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, The Independent
Thursday, 18 September 2008

A warning about the indiscriminate prescribing of antibiotics to pregnant women to delay premature labour was issued to all doctors yesterday after research unexpectedly revealed that the practice may cause long-term harm to their babies.

The Government’s chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, wrote to GPs, obstetricians and other medical staff following publication of the first study of the subject. The findings show an increased risk of cerebral palsy in the children of one group of women. There was also a small increase in problems such as poor eyesight or hearing. The results add to the growing evidence that what happens in the womb has a huge impact on the baby not only at birth but for decades beyond.

Sir Liam said in the letter that antibiotics should continue to be given to women in premature labour where there was evidence of infection, or risk of it because their waters had broken.

By: Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, The Independent
Thursday, 11 September 2008

An increase in infections that are resistant to all known antibiotics is threatening Britain and the world, unless ways can be found to develop and finance new drugs, public health experts warned yesterday.

The Health Protection Agency said yesterday that of 20,000 blood stream infections caused by E.coli in an average year, the proportion that were resistant to antibiotics rose from 4 per cent in 2000 (800 cases) to 12 per cent in 2006, but that there were no new drugs being developed, or in the pipeline, to tackle them.

E.coli is the commonest cause of lethal blood stream infections, especially in old or sick people. It is a gram-negative bacterium, which is more difficult to treat than a gram-positive bacteria, such as MRSA, because it has a tougher cell wall.

Click on the picture to enlarge …

By: Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, The Independent
Friday, 8 August 2008

“Why are we asking this now?

Cancer charities, kidney specialists and campaigners were outraged yesterday when the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice), announced that it had rejected four new drugs for advanced kidney cancer as too expensive for the NHS.

In draft guidance, the medicines watchdog said that the drugs can extend life by five to six months on average but they cost too much. The money would do more good if it were spent elsewhere in the NHS, it said.

Surely the NHS should provide these drugs?

Of course they should.
So why wouldn’t Nice give the go-ahead?
Because, it said, the drugs were not “cost-effective”.

What do the drugs cost?

Between £20,000 and £35,000 per patient per year. But that is only half the story. We also need to know how much benefit they bring.

Why are the drugs so expensive?

This is the question that dare not speak its name. It is incomprehensible that the manufacturers of the four drugs have so far escaped criticism. They are charging astronomical prices for drugs that offer little benefit – in effect, holding a gun to the heads of kidney cancer sufferers and saying to the NHS: “Give us the money or we shoot.”

So did Nice do the wrong thing?

Yes…:

* Patients in need of these drugs have few other options available to them

* Expensive or not, other European countries find the funds to provide the drugs

* It is inhumane to deny anyone the chance of living longer, even if the drug is not a cure

No…:

* They are too expensive for the benefit they deliver, which is not ultimately life-saving

* This is a zero-sum game: a pound spent on one patient is a pound denied to another

* It is unrealistic to expect every drug to be approved: the NHS budget is not unlimited