All prescriptions charges in England should be scrapped, doctors argue.

Make all prescriptions free in England, doctors argue
article in the Telegraph

Extract:

"The British Medical Association is calling for all prescriptions in England to be free and the National Pharmacy Association, and a host of patient charities are also in support.

Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have already abolished charges or are planning to.

A review of medical diagnoses which are exempt from charges is being carried out and chairman Prof Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, is due to report in the summer.

Currently only 11 per cent of people in England pay the £7.10 charge for a doctor's prescription and this will drop further from April 1st as cancer patients receiving treatment will each be exempt from fees for five years.

Gordon Brown has said exemptions will be extended to all people with long-term conditions, to be determined by the review, but doctors say this will leave only a tiny minority paying the fee which is 'nonsensical'.

The NHS earns around £450m a year from prescription charges out of a budget of around £100bn a year and this would be substantially reduced if all 15m people with long-term conditions were removed from charges, the BMA said.

Research has estimated that around 750,000 patients on low income, but who do not qualify for as exempt from charges, fail to have their medicines dispensed because of the cost."

To make all prescriptions free in England would certainly make the system simpler, and would undoubtedly be fairer, especially for people with long-term conditions, so I suppose I should support this idea. What troubles me about it is that it will, inevitably, lead to more people being prescribed drugs and to more people taking them, and it is my firm and sincere belief that prescribed drugs on the whole do far, far, far more harm (mostly unrecognised and certainly unacknowledged) than good.

Britain is in the grip of a binge drinking epidemic...

Epidemic of drunk teenagers in hospital - Telegraph

Extracts:

"Britain is in the grip of a binge drinking epidemic, according to two official studies yesterday that showed alcohol-related hospital admissions have doubled in a decade while a third of teenagers regularly drink to excess.

The number of drunk teenagers admitted to hospital in England increased by more than a third in the past 10 years, from 3,870 in 1995/96 to 5,280 in 2005/06.

In the same period, the number of adults admitted to hospital after drinking excessively more than doubled -from 89,280 to 187,640.

The statistics, from the Information Centre for Health and Social Care, which collates data for the Department of Health, also showed that alcohol consumption among children aged between 11 and 13 has reached a record high."

"The figures came as doctors called for action on binge drinking. Delegates at the British Medical Association's conference in Torquay, voted for a ban on consuming alcohol in the street.

They also backed a call for a reduction in the drink-drive limit from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood.

Alcohol abuse is estimated to cost the country £20 billion a year through crime and damage to health.

Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the head of ethics at the BMA, said that too many children did not understand that alcohol was "an acute poison" when consumed excessively.

"We are not just talking about liver disease," she said. "People become violent, fall unconscious and become seriously dehydrated.

"We are seeing dehydrated people in their twenties who have had major strokes because they have drunk too much."

Norman Lamb, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, accused the Government of ignoring the dangers of binge drinking."


Lose weight, lower your risk of stroke, lower your high cholesterol level, reduce your risk of heart disease and heart attack, and benefit your health in countless other ways by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better! -
How to Lose weight!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

NHS problems have left thousands of doctor training posts unfilled

NHS fiasco leaves 4,000 jobs unfilled - Telegraph

Extract:

"The full extent of the junior doctor recruitment crisis was laid bare yesterday after figures showed that thousands of training posts have not yet been filled.

A leaked document from the Department of Health showed that almost a quarter of specialist training positions for young medics - the equivalent of more than 4,000 jobs - were still empty.

With only five weeks to the Aug 1 deadline for doctors to take up their new jobs, experts warned that patients' lives could be put at risk if posts were not filled. The recruitment fiasco was brought to light by The Daily Telegraph in March after it was inundated with letters and emails from despairing doctors. The Government has repeatedly said that no doctor would be unemployed by the time the entire recruitment process comes to an end in October. But the British Medical Association estimates that 12,000 doctors will not get a post as a result of Labour's botched online recruitment system.

In a passionate appeal to Gordon Brown to "end the misery" of junior doctors, Dr Sam Everington, the BMA's acting chairman, said it was a scandal that many doctors were facing uncertainty about their future medical careers."


Lose weight by eating less salt! - Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/
Read my Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Doctors intend to suggest that fat children be put into care. They would do better to correct the misinformation they have been giving for decades!

Doctors: 'Put obese children into care' - Independent on Sunday

Extract:

"A motion to be put forward at the British Medical Association's (BMA) annual conference later this month will also say that social workers should treat childhood obesity as neglect in cases where parents refuse to listen to the advice of healthcare experts.

The recommendation comes amid growing concern about Britain's obesity epidemic and the long-term health risks. British children are among the most overweight in the world. In the UK, there are around one million obese children under 16. It is thought that as many as one fifth of boys and one third of girls will be obese by 2020. The rise in obesity has led to an increase in childhood diabetes and warnings that children are putting themselves at risk of future heart disease, osteoarthritis and some cancers."

Child obesity is directly caused by the long failure of health professionals and other 'experts' to give the right information and advice about obesity. Their insistence that obesity is caused by overeating has led to overweight and obese people trying to lose weight by dieting/'slimming' and calorie counting/restriction, and to parents trying to get their children to lose weight in this way too.

But obesity is NOT caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, which in children results from eating too much salt and salty food. In adults obesity is frequently the result of taking prescribed medications, especially steroids such as prednisolone, prednisone and HRT, and anti-depressants such as amitriptyline. (When doctors prescribe drugs that cause sodium retention and water retention they should warn the patient not to eat salt, or food containing salt, while taking the medication. When they do not give this warning, the inevitable consequence is considerable weight gain.)

Read here about the groups of people who are vulnerable to salt: vulnerable groups

Obesity can be easily reduced by seriously reducing your salt/sodium intake and eating plenty of fruit and fresh vegetables. - It is important not to restrict calories. - 'Slimming' or 'dieting' is unnecessary, ineffective and often harmful.

Mensa article on Obesity and the Salt Connection

Lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

Plans to clamp down on the way cigarettes are sold are being considered by the government to protect children's health.

Plans for clamp on teenage smoking - The Observer

Extracts:

"Radical plans to clamp down on the way cigarettes are sold are being considered by the government in an effort to tackle historically high levels of smoking among teenagers.

The blueprint for making cigarettes harder to buy, particularly for young people, have been drawn up by leading doctors and will now be evaluated by the Department of Health.

The sale of packs of 10 cigarettes - attractive to teenagers because they are cheaper - would be banned and cigarettes kept out of sight in shops."

"The far-reaching suggestions from the BMA's board of science are intended to reduce the harm which adult smoking does to children. Its report, 'Breaking the Cycle of Children's Exposure to Tobacco Smoke', stresses that parental smoking has a profound impact on the health of offspring, through inhalation of second-hand smoke, house fires caused by cigarettes and encouraging youngsters to regard smoking as normal. Having parents who smoke increases the chance of young people smoking."

"The measures are intended to reduce what the Treasury has estimated is the 80 billion cigarettes bought in the UK every year and, over time, cut the annual toll of about 112,000 deaths - 70,000 in men and 42,000 in women - linked to smoking. About 1,000 people a day are admitted to hospital in England alone suffering from smoking-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease and respiratory problems.

Although only a quarter of British adults smoke, almost half the country's children are exposed to tobacco smoke at home, according to research by Cancer Research UK, the leading cancer charity. The Royal College of Physicians estimates that more than 17,000 children under five are admitted to hospital every year because of passive smoking."

Reduce your risk of heart disease, stroke and cancer, and lose weight by eating less salt! Go on! - Try it! - You will feel so much better!
See my website www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk and webpage http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/conditions.html
(The site does not sell anything and has no banners or sponsors or adverts - just helpful information.)

British Medical Association spokesperson says that treatment for gambling should be offered by NHS

BMA: Treatment for gambling should be offered by NHS

I don't agree. - I do not believe that there is anything to be gained by labelling gambling as a medical condition, nor by treating it as a medical condition, and certainly not on the NHS.

If people want help in giving up gambling, they can obtain it from an organisation called Gamblers Anonymous. And I believe that Gamblers Anonymous should be largely or wholly funded by the gambling industry.