‘Almost 400 people have been hospitalised with heart and respiratory problems caused by heavy air pollution in Tehran, with nearly 1,500 others requiring treatment, an official said Tuesday.
Year round, more than four million cars spew exhaust fumes into the atmosphere of the Iranian capital. The situation worsens in winter, when cold air leads to a carcinogenic fog that blankets the city.’
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‘WHO figures show more than 19,000 people infected across west Africa, with Sierra Leone accounting for nearly half of total.
The death toll from the worst ever outbreak of Ebola has reached nearly 7,400, with just over 19,000 people infected across west Africa, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Sierra Leone reported 400 new fatalities this week, bringing the death toll there to 2,500. As of 18 December, it had the highest number of people infected by the virus – 8,800 cases, of which 6,900 were confirmed, according to the country’s health ministry.’
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Ebola death toll close to 7,400, says World Health Organisation
‘Data showed just under 90% of patients were seen within four hours in the seven days up to December 14.
Major units particularly struggled, with just six out of 140 meeting the target to see 95% within four hours.’
‘There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital – 80,000 from A&E units – which is an all-time high.
Trolley waits – that is waits of four hours or more for a bed once a decision to admit a patient into hospital from A&E is made – topped 10,000 for the first time.
That compares to under 4,000 for the same week last year.’
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After Prime Minister David Cameron commissioned Jim O’Neill in July 2014 to review the status of antimicrobial resistance, it has been reported that ‘Failure to tackle drug-resistant infections will lead to at least 10 million extra deaths a year and cost the global economy up to $100tn (£64tn) by 2050.’
The article continues to contextualise these figures, demonstrating that ‘there are currently 8.2 million deaths a year from cancer and annual global GDP stands at $70tn to $75tn, with the UK figure around $3tn.’
The review placed emphasis on researching the progress of 3 bacteria: carbapenem-resistant K pneumoniae (CRKP), Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), but ‘also examined HIV, tuberculosis and malaria as broader public health issues for which resistance is a concern’.
‘The world’s most populous countries, India and China, face 2 million and 1 million deaths a year respectively by 2050 and one in every four deaths in Nigeria’, while currently the ‘“low estimate” of the current number of annual global deaths is put at 700,000’.
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Drug-resistant infections could lead to 10 million extra deaths a year
‘Half of women and 43% of men in England are now regularly taking prescription drugs, according to the comprehensive Health Survey for England.
Cholesterol-lowering statins, pain relief and anti-depressants were among the most prescribed medicines.
The report, by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), showed an average of 18.7 prescriptions per person in England in 2013.
The cost to the NHS was in excess of £15 bn-a-year.’
This article really surprised me by putting a very large number on the UK’s dependency on medications, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and the NHS as a whole.
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‘One in six GP surgeries in England is at risk of offering patients poor care, including trouble getting an appointment and being given out of date medicine, the NHS care watchdog has warned.
About 1,200 practices potentially put patients either at “risk” or “elevated risk” through inadequate care, according to the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
In its first assessment of all 7,661 GP surgeries in England, the regulator warned that while many are looking after patients well, 1,200 (16%) pose such a concern that they will be visited and assessed under its tough new inspection in the next few months’.
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One in six GP surgeries in England ‘at risk of offering patients poor care’
The Sierra Leone government have announced the death of Dr Godfrey George, ‘medical superintendent of Kambia government hospital in northern Sierra Leone’ who died Sunday night, making him the fifth doctor to die of Ebola in West Africa since the start of the epidemic.
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‘“They said, ‘Your wife’s had a stroke,’” recalls Adam. “In that one moment, my whole world dropped away.”
Adam rushed back to St George’s hospital in Tooting, south London, near their family home in Clapham. His wife, Mia Sarjeant, was already in the operating theatre having brain surgery. He was taken aside by one of the doctors for the first of many talks. “Basically, the one where you are told that there is a high chance your wife is going to die,” says Adam.
Struggling to take it all in, it dawned on him that he had been left literally holding the baby. Leaving Mia in the neurological intensive care unit he set off on the long walk back across the hospital to the delivery ward to collect his day-old daughter. “I felt sick,” he says. “I tried to gather my thoughts and myself. I was on autopilot.”’
‘Each morning, Adam would get Esther up, change and feed her, put her into a cot and wheel her over to intensive care. At first the doctors wouldn’t admit the baby, in case of infection, but Adam pressed until they relented. “When I finally got in, I put the baby on top of Mia,” he says. “She was all wired up, unable to communicate, but there’s always a mother-baby connection. I felt that was hugely important.”’
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‘Two in three family GPs refuse to follow NHS advice to give statins to 40 per cent of adults, survey finds’.
‘Family doctors said guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), advising 40 per cent of adults to take the pills, were “simplistic”. They insisted they would not allow the “mass medicalisation” of the public.
The guidelines, published in July, say drugs to protect against strokes and heart attacks should be offered to anyone with a one in 10 chance of developing heart disease within a decade.
It means 17.5 million adults, including most men aged over 60 and women over 65, are now eligible for the drugs, which cost less than 10p a day’.
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Anaesthetist and manslaughter convict Dr Richard Kaul has been brought to light after claiming to be a spine surgeon and having performed numerous spine operations only to be sued by his patients for negligence and deviation from standard care.
‘It didn’t take long for Richard Kaul’s spine surgery practice in the middle-class New Jersey suburb of Pompton Lakes to turn a profit. The Indian-born, British-raised doctor had been performing procedures in small surgeries for a number of years before he opened his own place in 2011. By 2012, he owned a $2m home in New Jersey, a Manhattan penthouse and an $8.3m brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side, which boasted a soundproof media room, three terraces and nine fireplaces’.
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Trust me, I’m a doctor: the case of the rogue spinal surgeon
Medicine is Alive Everywhere 