This site is intended for health professionals only


£1.1bn funding windfall for GP premises, dementia patients ‘not getting the care they need’ one in four transplants from a high risk donor

The big news from over the weekend is the extra £2bn of NHS funding announced by George Osborne on Sunday, with £1.1bn over four years to go towards modernising GP premises.

The Daily Mail reports that the GP money could be spent on developing chemotherapy services in practices to enable cancer sufferers to be treated closer to home.

Equally widely reported are the accusations from Labour that the conservatives are ‘fiddling the figures’ as £700 million was already allocated to health spending.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: ‘The chancellor’s spin is of no help at all to an NHS in real crisis now’.

Read our story on this here, and the reaction here.

Charities believe dementia patients are not getting the care they need because the condition is not recognised as a terminal illness, the BBC reports.

Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Alzheimer’s Society said the terminal aspect of dementia is being  ‘forgotten’, with end-of-life care for the condition shaped by care set up for people dying from cancer.

The report said: ‘We must ensure a stronger focus on the inevitable conclusion of what is a progressive, terminal condition. Those with dementia will die (whether directly as a result of dementia or of another co-existing condition) and we must improve the care of people in the later stages of dementia.’

And the Telegraph reports that one in four organ transplants is coming from a high risk donor.

The NHS Blood and Transplant confirmed that last year 25% of organ donations came from those with a history of drug abuse, tumours, or those over the age of 70.

Public concern in the walk of the deaths of Robert Stuartland and Darren Hughes – who were given diseased kidneys – led to the head of the British Transplant Society warning patients may die unnecessarily if they turn down organs.