Health News Blog

UK Biobank shares data with insurance firm
UK Biobank is a limited company and charity set up in 2006. Volunteers aged from 40 to 69 are monitored to capture all disease events, drug prescriptions and deaths in a database. It's now revealed that UK Biobank opened up its database to insurance sector firms several times between 2020 and 2023.

Child bronchitis due to damp homes
Dr Andy Know, senior medical director of the NHS said "Thousands of babies and toddlers are being admitted to hospital in England each year with lung conditions probably linked to damp and mould-ridden homes".

Private rental conditions 'shameful'
The chair of the Association of Chief Environmental Health Officers in England said a legal loophole is allowing landlords to rent out squalid homes is contributing to “shameful” conditions of the type seen nearly a century ago.

Sunak's NHS waiting list pledge downgraded
The government has written to ICBs to say "..We are asking ICBs and providers, by 22 November, to agree the steps required to live within their re-baselined system allocation." This signals the downgrading of No 10’s battle against waiting lists. The government were asked to provide a £1 billion to cover the cost of strikes, but have pledged just a tenth of that.

Failings in maternity care - Why?
For years there have been calls for the government to deal with the shortage of midwives. There's been a sequence of scandals across the country; in all regions the Royal College of Midwives have called for action, with no effective response from government. Now parents of babies who have died are demanding that ministers order a public inquiry into repeated failings in NHS maternity units.

How to improve nurses staff shortage
Prior to 2017 student nurses were given given a non-means tested grant of £1,000 per year in addition to a means tested annual bursary of up to £8,750 and also had their tuition paid directly to their higher education institution by Health Education England. George Osborne changed this, nurses now must take out a student loan leading to a debt of £47,000 to £50,000. Labour are considering plams for newly qualified doctors and nurses in England to have their student loans written off.

Peer Mone finally admits involvement in PPE firm
Despite denying all this time, Conservative peer Michelle Mone has owned up, "...she acted as an intermediary/liaison between PPE Medpro and the Cabinet Office/Department of Health and Social Care". Mone and her husband secretly received tens of millions of pounds from PPE Medpro’s profits.

Stop Palantir, sign up
Please add your name to a new emergency petition calling for the NHS Palantir data takeover to be dropped. Palantir, a dodgy US spy tech corporation, is the worst kind of company to let anywhere near our NHS. But not only that - it would lock in a costly plan for NHS data that lacks safeguards to protect our data from private companies.

Why we have huge NHS waiting lists
A Health Foundation report says "The roots of the growth in the waiting list lie in avoidable failures including a decade of underinvestment in the NHS, a failure to address chronic staff shortages and the longstanding neglect of social care."

Sign petition to stop Palantir
The government wants to hand US spy tech firm Palantir a £480 million contract to run a "Federated Data Platform" - a database of all our health information. Sign this petition to stop Palantir getting its hands on our data.

There are 250 fewer GPs than a year ago
GP numbers continue to fall year-on-year as new NHS workforce data shows that there are 254 fewer fully-qualified GPs than last year.

Cost of workforce plan underestimated
A group of influential MPs have warned that the ‘unfunded and uncosted’ NHS long term workforce plan risks building on ‘unsustainable’ financial pressures.

Private children's homes £300 million profit
Council spending on privately-run children’s homes in England has more than doubled in six years. Yet the biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year.

Strikes: Suddenly the government wants talks
Having insisted that their offer is independently assessed and final, the government has agreed to meet junior doctors for talks aimed at ending the strike.

A clear analysis of NHS underfunding
"It’s quite clear that unless Labour increases NHS spending it will find itself in charge as performance in some areas slumps even further, buildings crumble and collapse and there is an exodus of burnt out and demoralised staff". John Lister of Keep Our NHS Public gives the figures that identify the crises, NHS service by NHS service, and tells of the primary cause - chronic deliberate underfunding.

A vision for a National Health Service
"The NHS model has not failed the population; it is the Government that has failed the NHS".... "stop the diversion of billions to private hospitals and fund the NHS to succeed."

Cash crisis in ICBs
Integrated Care Boards that now run local NHS services are in a deep financial mess. With few exceptions ICBs, and acute hospital trusts, are facing huge financial problems, forcing consideration of ever-larger scale “efficiency savings”, outright cuts and "unpalatable measures" as they struggle to stretch inadequate budgets to meet tough targets.