Patient died of legionnaires' disease caught from a dirty showerhead in Bath's Royal United hospital (NHS Trust)

Hospital guilty over legionnaires' death

Extract:

"A hospital where a patient died of legionnaires' disease caught from a dirty showerhead was criticised in court yesterday for "blatantly" ignoring safety guidance.

Daryl Eyles, 37, contracted the disease hours before he was due to leave hospital following successful treatment for cancer. Bath's Royal United hospital (RUH) yesterday pleaded guilty to charges that it carried out inadequate safety checks of its water system.

Jennifer Gunning, chair of the bench that heard the case at Bath magistrates court, referred the case to Bristol crown court because she did not feel the lower court's sentencing powers were sufficient. She said: "Guidance was available for more than 10 years, but this was blatantly not followed. The RUH management was inadequate. Mr Eyles died as a result of those failings and many other vulnerable patients were put at risk. We believe this to be so serious that our sentencing powers are not sufficient.""

A sympathetic article about Sally Clark and her suffering.

No redemption for Sally Clark - article in The Daily Telegraph

Extract:

"Sally Clark walked out of prison four years ago, but she was never set free. Not in her head. Not in her own mind, where the demons still raged and screamed, even though the persona she showed to the outside world was bland and contained. The ordeal of being wrongly convicted for the murder of her two baby sons, then serving more than three years of a prison sentence and being released only on her second appeal was one that Clark could not recover from.

Who could? The look on her face, as she stood outside the High Court in January 2003, told its own story. In her moment of vindication, when it was proved that her sons had been cot death victims all along, Clark did not look triumphant or happy."

More than half of all pregnant women are left alone at some point while giving birth, survey suggests

More than half of women left alone while in labour, survey suggests

Extract:

"More than half of all pregnant women are left alone at some point while giving birth, a survey commissioned by the Department of Health reveals today.

The poll, conducted by the national perinatal epidemiology unit (NPEU) and co-funded by the healthcare watchdog, the Healthcare Commission, suggests more than 300,000 women a year are being left for some period of time, with 75,000 of them suffering anxiety as a result.

While there are no guidelines that insist women are not left while giving birth, draft guidance from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence proposes that women "should not be left alone once labour is established"."

Couch potatoes are costing NHS £1bn a year, claim Oxford University researchers, but they are mistaken.

Couch potatoes costing NHS £1bn a year, say researchers

Extract:

"Britain's couch potato tendency is costing the NHS £1bn a year as diseases linked to physical inactivity rise, according to research published today.

Our sluggishness causes both disease and death, says the report by experts at Oxford University's department of public health. They estimate that in 2003-04 more than 35,000 deaths could have been avoided if Britons had enjoyed a more active lifestyle.

The study takes into account only the direct costs to the NHS of lack of exercise, focusing on the treatment of heart disease, stroke, breast and bowel cancers, and diabetes. There are also high indirect costs associated with days lost to sickness absence and premature death, private healthcare costs and home care."

These researchers are making the same mistake as those I wrote about in this blog entry http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/03/15-minutes-of-football-can-halve.html They are confusing cause with effect. Exercise does not reduce obesity and there is no evidence that it does.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html for the political and politically-related causes of obesity.

Calorie counting and advice about increasing exercise and reducing fat and carbohydrate intake to reduce obesity are ineffective, counter-productive and often damaging. - See the article in the British Medical Journal of November 2003 BMJ article for actual research on what happens when this advice is followed! - Over 800 obese adults were put on energy deficit diets, given diet sheets and plenty of instruction and help from trained staff, and apparently, visited fortnightly for a year, at the end of which they had GAINED weight! This mirrors the real experience of obese people, viz. - dieting makes you fat.

It is commonly accepted now, except by the 'experts', that less than 5% of dieters actually lose weight, and most gain weight as a result of dieting.

Obesity is not caused by overeating. It is caused by fluid retention, which in turn is usually caused by sensitivity to salt and excess weight is easily lost by cutting down on salt and salty food.

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.)

Clenbuterol: illegal weight-loss wonder drug with a host of dangerous side-effects. - The SAFE way to lose excess weight is to eat less salt/sodium.

Clenbuterol: The new weight-loss wonder drug gripping Planet Zero

Extract:

"Clenbuterol is illegal in this country for human or even animal use, to treat asthma or anything else. This is because it causes side effects, such as palpitations and arrhythmia [irregular heartbeat], and has been responsible for several cases of poisoning in humans. This may not trouble Planet Skinny, but it is seriously worrying doctors on both sides of the Atlantic.

In most countries in Europe, Clenbuterol is forbidden for use in animals that will enter the food chain. But that does not always prevent its use. Because it increases muscle definition and reduces fat, livestock are often dosed with the drug to make them appear more attractive to buyers. In Spain in 1994, 140 people were hospitalised after they consumed meat tainted with the drug and suffered dizziness, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, shakes and headaches. Just over a year ago, the Chinese newspaper People's Daily reported that 336 people in Shanghai had been poisoned after eating pork tainted with Clenbuterol. The drug had been banned by the Chinese government in the 1990s.

Last week a Home Office spokesman told The Independent: "Clenbuterol is a hormone growth stimulant and a Class C drug. It is an offence to supply or have intent to supply Clenbuterol. There is no possession offence - although obviously if somebody had so much that they seemed to be intending to supply, they may be prosecuted. It carries a maximum sentence of 14 years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.""

All that is normally necessary to lose excess weight is to eat less salt, i.e. to reduce one's sodium intake, and to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. This is the SAFE, reliable way to lose weight fast.

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.)

15 minutes of football 'can halve obesity risk' - nonsensical claim made by University of Bristol team. Professor Andy Ness.

15 minutes of football 'can halve obesity risk'

Extracts:

"Kicking a football around for just 15 minutes a day can halve a child's risk of becoming obese, a study has found. Even small increases in daily activity, such as walking to school instead of going by car, could have impressive long-term results, researchers say.

The official advice is that children need an hour of moderate to vigorous exercise a day - long enough to put off many parents who do not have the time to take their children to the sports centre. But a quarter-of-an-hour's kickaround may be all that is needed, according to the University of Bristol team."

"Professor Andy Ness, of the University of Bristol, said: "It has been really surprising to us how even small amounts of exercise appear to have dramatic results. If you say to parents they have got to take their children for an hour-long early morning run, they will throw up their hands and say it is impossible. But if you say kicking a ball around for 15 minutes or going for a quick swim is all that is needed then they may well feel that is manageable. And it is probably good for the family, too."

Professor Ness said girls were no more likely to be obese than boys and that their lower activity levels indicated they were using "other strategies" to stay slim, such as "dietary restraint". But claims by rival researchers that activity levels of children were genetically pre-determined were wide of the mark."

The claim that "Kicking a football around for just 15 minutes a day can halve a child's risk of becoming obese" is completely untrue. One of the problems with this sort of study is that the researchers confuse cause with effect. When children have become overweight - usually by eating salty food - exercise is much more difficult and tiring for them so they tend to do less. - Doing less exercise is not the cause of the overweight, but the result of it.

When children become fat it is essentially because they are eating salty food. Children are especially vulnerable to salt because of their small size and small blood volume, and because their blood vessels are weaker than those of adults. Salt, and the water it attracts to it, can more easily distend weak blood vessels than fully mature ones. The resulting increase in blood volume and other fluid retention results in weight gain, as well as higher blood pressure and many other undesirable consequences. The smaller the child, the less salt they should have - and a baby, of course, should have no salt at all. - Babies can die if they are fed salty food.

Because children have much smaller bodies than adults it would be best if they had no more than half as much salt as adults. Most children, however, have much more than this because they eat so many snacks and instant foods. Just one cheeseburger, for instance, contains almost double the recommended daily salt maximum for children. There are high amounts of salt in packet soups, instant noodles, ketchup and sauces, sausages, burgers and savoury snacks. Fat children will lose weight fast if they eat less salt. And even faster still if they eat plenty of fresh fruit and unsalted vegetables, because these are rich in potassium, which helps to displace sodium from the body.

See http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/children.html and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2007/03/obese-do-not-try-to-lose-weight-by.html and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2006/10/exercise-has-little-effect-on.html
and http://aboutsalt.blogspot.com/2006/11/do-you-believe-that-obesity-is-caused.html

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.)

All-party public accounts committee of MPs reports financial mismanagement and lack of control over NHS billions

MPs expose lack of control over NHS billions

Extract:

"A devastating insight into financial mismanagement at all levels of the NHS - from Government ministers down to hospital bureaucrats - is provided by a committee of MPs today.

The report by the all-party public accounts committee exposes how billions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being poured into a health system with inadequate financial controls and low levels of accounting expertise.

The MPs conclude that NHS structures are so inadequate that the Department of Health has no idea what the effect of last year's total deficit of £570 million is having on patient care.

The deficit was recorded despite a massive rise in NHS spending from £69.7 billion in 2004-5 to £76.4 billion in 2005-6. In this financial year the amount being pumped in will soar again to £92.6 billion.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the committee, said "weak control of finances" and "lack of interest" by doctors in the sums they were spending were to blame for many of the deficit problems.

In no less than one in three NHS organisations, auditors had raised concerns "about the financial management capabilities of general management".

In one in four they were worried about the financial performance of non-executive directors.

The committee said that while the Department of Health had no "overall picture" of the effect of deficits on services to patients, it was clear they were adversely affecting the level and quality of care."

The cost of parking at your NHS hospital: £95m

The cost of parking at your hospital: £95m

Extracts:

"NHS hospitals were yesterday accused of exploiting the "most vulnerable" after they were found to have made more than £95 million in parking charges last year.

Patients attending for treatment and relatives or friends visiting people in hospital were charged up to £3.50 an hour despite paying to build car parks through their taxes.

Last night, the cancer charity Macmillan, which obtained details through Freedom of Information, called for an end to the "shameful" charges. Two trusts each raised more than £2 million and a further 30 raised more than £1 million each from "outrageous charges on the weak and vulnerable''.

Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust took £2,414,672 and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust took £2,263,297.

Patients and visitors often have no choice but to use hospital parking, which used to be free. Some out-patients are too weak to walk further from their car and many of those who visit in-patients are themselves elderly or infirm.

The charity Macmillan Cancer Support Research raised the parking issue yesterday on behalf of cancer patients who have to make regular hospital visits. It said the £95 million total was shocking.

Judy Beard, Macmillan's acting chief executive, said: "Cancer patients spend hundreds of pounds each year on hospital parking. Macmillan wants to see all cancer patients travelling regularly for treatment to be able to park free."

"Hospitals have also started to charge for bedside telephones and television sets and many have replaced charity-run cafes with more expensive cafeterias."

Salt consumption in Britain is falling but still 50 per cent higher than advised, claims Food Standards Agency.

Salt consumption falling but still 50 per cent higher than advised

Extract:

"Salt consumption in Britain has dropped but is still on average 50 per cent higher than the recommended amount, new research claims. Tests on 1,287 adults showed their average salt intake was 9g per day compared to 9.5g when tests were done in 2001.

But consumption is still higher than the Government's national target of 6g per day, the Food Standards Agency said.

The urinary sodium tests carried out in 2005-06 showed men consumed an average 10.2g of salt per day compared to 11g in 2001.

Women's average intake was less at 7.6g per day - down from 8.1g in 2005/06.

The results follow a Food Standards Agency campaign encouraging people to cut their salt intake. The campaign warns that 75 per cent of salt eaten in Britain is found in processed food."

It is scandalous that successive governments and their negligent Departments of Health delayed until 2003 warning British citizens that salt intake could be too high and could cause serious illness and early death. AND THEY ARE STILL NOT TELLING PEOPLE THAT TO LOSE EXCESS WEIGHT THEY NEED TO REDUCE SALT/SODIUM INTAKE AND NOT REDUCE CALORIES, BECAUSE OBESITY IS CAUSED BY FLUID RETENTION, NOT BY EATING TOO MANY CALORIES. - I certainly do not believe that all the expensive government advisors are so ill-informed that they do not know this to be the case. I believe that the reason we are being constantly exhorted to eat less salt is in the pious hope that obesity will thereby be reduced - but will be attributed to an increase in exercise, about which we are also being constantly exhorted. 'Experts'on eating problems have a big eating problem of their own; they do not relish having to eat their own words. - They are hoping to get away with it - get away with not being forced to admit that their calorie and overeating claims of the past are not only needless and ineffective, but are also counter-productive - more likely to cause weight gain than weight loss in obese people, because eating insufficient calories causes increased water retention in the blood stream. And of course the ones who know the truth are hoping desperately to hide the truth so that they do not get sued by the thousands and thousands of innocent people who have been greatly harmed by the misinformation the 'experts' have been giving for many years. - If the truth were to be told - that to lose excess weight the calorie myth must be abandoned and the obese person needs to cut down seriously on salt/sodium intake - then obese people could concentrate on eating less sodium instead of wasting any more of their lives on the dangerous course of eating fewer calories than the body needs. - And they would rapidly and safely lose weight - without hunger, without drugs, without strenuous exercise and without fail.

1 Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease 1994 This COMA report considered the evidence for a causal relationship between the consumption of sodium and both the level of blood pressure and the rise in blood pressure with age. A statement in the report said it recommended: "A reduction in the average intake of common salt (sodium chloride) by the adult population from the current level of about 9g/day to about 6g/day. There needs to be a gradual reduction in the amount of sodium from salt added to processed food and food manufacturers, caterers, and individuals should explore and grasp the opportunity for reducing the sodium content of foods and meals." The Chief Medical Officer at that time, accepted all the recommendations in this COMA report except for the recommendation to reduce salt. The reason for this is not clear but is believed to be pressure from industry. Department of Health (1994), "Nutritional Aspects of Cardiovascular Disease", HMSO, London.

2 Dietary Reference Values 1991 This COMA report considered that: "Current sodium intakes are needlessly high and we caution against any trend towards increased intakes". It set its recommended intake for salt, as with all the other recommended intakes for nutrients, on the basis of the balance of risks and benefits, which might practically be expected to occur. The RNI for a particular population group is defined as the amount of the nutrient that is enough or more than enough for about 97% of the people in this group. The Reference Nutrient Intake (RNI) for sodium for adults was set at 1600 mg/day. This is equivalent to approximately 4g of salt, if all the sodium was present in the diet as sodium chloride. This is considerably less than the present intake of 9-12g. Department of Health (1991), "Dietary Reference values for food, energy and nutrients for the United Kingdom", HMSO, London

I wonder why The Chief Medical Officer in the early '90s apparently did nothing to implement the recommendation of a maximum of 4g of salt a day, and apparently gave greater consideration to the desires of the food industry than to the health of the nation, and I wonder how many deaths and how much terrible suffering he was, therefore, personally responsible for? And I wonder why his successors in the post were so tardy in taking effective steps to give warnings about salt consumption? - Political considerations? - What though, could be more important in this matter than the health of the members of public - the electorate - the tax-payers, in fact?

I consider the failure to put pressure on food manufacturers and caterers to reduce the sodium content of foods and meals until recent times to be a dereliction of duty of successive political administrations and health departments. - I remember buying McCance and Widdowson's 'Composition of Foods' in the late '90s, at considerable cost, in order to discover how much sodium there was in food. There was no way consumers could get this information from the pack.

Here's a serious suggestion for the government: - put a punitive tax on table salt.

For fuller discussion on the political considerations that have caused the obesity epidemic you need to read the whole of page http://www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk/story.html

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

"I stuffed their mouths with gold," said Aneurin Bevan, speaking of the only way he had been able to get the consultants into the NHS when it started.

When gold won't buy quiet

Extract:

""I stuffed their mouths with gold," said Aneurin Bevan, recalling the only way in which he had been able to silence the shrill protests of the consultants who might otherwise have strangled the NHS at birth. After a weekend in which doctors took to the street in protest, ministers may take comfort from knowing that for the government to encounter resentment from medics is nothing new. But ministers may now face a deeper difficulty too, in the attitudes of taxpayers. Helped along by a Conservative party showing a new adeptness in presentation, the idea gaining ground is that the government has once again been dishing out the gold to the doctors, but that this time round it has not been having the effect it should."

Well the doctors are still grossly overpaid and are still for all practical purposes unaccountable to the patients whom nominally they serve, because the NHS complaints procedures are in practice an exercise in futility and exhaustion for complainants. Despite all the 'gold' lavished on the doctors, we have an extremely poor health service. - Added to poor service, our once-clean hospitals are now dirty, and many patients fear to go into them in case they catch one of the hospital acquired infections...

The death of the solicitor Sally Clark, wrongly convicted of murdering her 2 baby sons,has led to calls for support for miscarriage of justice victims

Call to support prisoners freed on appeal

Extract:

"The sudden death of the solicitor Sally Clark, who was wrongly convicted of murdering her two baby sons, has prompted calls for government support for miscarriage of justice victims. Mrs Clark, 42, was found dead at her Essex home on Friday. A postmortem will be carried out today.

John McManus, one of the founders of the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation, said people who left prison after their convictions were overturned needed specialist counselling. "The death of Sally Clark is the day we have been waiting for and dreading," he said.

"Something like this was bound to happen. People like Sally Clark go through hell after being released. We don't know how she died yet. But it will have been stress-related - you can be sure of that.""

Patients' lives could be being put at risk because one in 10 scan results are not reported to doctors.

Results of 1 in 10 scans not reported

Extract:

"Patients' lives could be being put at risk because one in 10 scan results are not reported to doctors, a report by the healthcare watchdog warns today.

The Healthcare Commission found that the results of almost 10% of diagnostic scans - including x-rays, ultrasounds and MRI or CT scans - are never formally reported to the clinicians who order them.

In some cases there will be an agreement that an x-ray is fine if no written result is offered; in others, doctors may have been told the results informally. Clinicians may also look at scans and reach their own conclusions. But such an approach risks leaving injuries or serious conditions undetected - particularly when scans have been ordered by GPs, who will not normally be able to view the images, or by relatively- inexperienced A&E doctors."

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.)