Vital health reforms are delivering real change but must continue if we are to tackle waiting list and staffing pressures. That was the message from the Department of Health as it launched a progress report on health and social care transformation. Permanent Secretary Richard Pengelly said, ‘We are clearly living through a defining era in [...]
The world’s first ‘Darwinian’ drug discovery programme, specially designed to tackle cancer’s lethal ability to evolve resistance to treatment, is to be launched in a state-of-the-art new building in London. The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, is to invest an initial £75 million in creating a global centre of expertise in anti-evolution therapies – [...]
A new British Heart Foundation strategy has set the ambition for the UK to halve premature death and disability from stroke, and increase survival from heart attack to 90 per cent, by 2030. The number of people dying from heart and circulatory diseases before they reach their 75th birthday is on the rise for the [...]
A public consultation on reshaping stroke services has been launched, with plans to create specialised hyperacute stroke units offering 24 / 7 access to faster diagnosis and cutting-edge treatments. The central aim of the reforms is to significantly reduce disability and save more lives. The proposed new network of hyperacute stroke units will ensure that [...]
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have found that spending large amounts of time sitting or lounging around during the day is linked to around 70,000 deaths per year in the UK. This amounts to more than £0.7 billion per year in costs to the NHS for treating the health consequences. A large proportion of the [...]
The Northern Ireland Healthcare Leadership Forum is a multidisciplinary, student-led group that arranges conferences which bring together health and social care students and staff, patients, and formal leaders to discuss / debate service delivery, current challenges, and leadership. On 4th April the forum is presenting its final conference of the year to deliberate the future [...]
Women who find their jobs mentally tiring are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in the European Journal of Endocrinology. The study findings suggest that mentally draining work, such as teaching, may increase the risk of diabetes in women. This indicates that employers and women should be more aware [...]
Last October, day case surgery hubs – elective care centres – were announced for cataract and varicose vein procedures. These prototype centres have been operational since December 2018 and form part of a long-term plan to reduce waiting lists. Now the same approach is to be rolled out across a wide range of specialities, meaning [...]
The largest conference of GPs in the UK has called on the Westminster government to take ‘immediate steps’ to offset the effects of Brexit on the Northern Ireland health service. The conference, which was held in the ICC-Waterfront in Belfast, and attended by 600 GPs from across the UK, unanimously passed a motion recognising ‘the [...]
Children who experience physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect are at least two-to-three-times more likely to attempt suicide in later life, according to the largest research review carried out of the topic. The analysis of 68 studies by psychologists at the University of Manchester and University of South Wales has revealed that suicide attempts [...]
