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High Court orders CQC to review complaints process over GP ratings
Closure of 7,000-patient practice forces neighbouring GPs to re-open patient lists
14:50 Tens of thousands of new mothers with mental health issues are missing out on proper post-birth care and are being left to look after themselves due to crippling staff shortages, the Telegraph reports.
New NHS figures reveal that just 15% of areas provide the recommended level of post-birth community care, while 40% offer no service at all.
12:05 Experts have warned that sex workers are at greater risk of violence and ill health due to increasing cuts in specialist NHS health and support services across the country, the Guardian reports.
According to an editorial in the BMJ, specialist NHS-funded services have so far controlled outbreaks of STIs and tuberculosis among sex workers.
Outreach programmes have also halved the risk of them contracting sexually transmitted infections, the editorial’s co-authors, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said.
Alex Feis-Bryce, chief executive officer of support group for sex workers, National Ugly Mugs, said: ‘The generic funding cuts are very concerning and the impacts are huge. To expect them to access generic services is unrealistic. We know that sex workers are targeted by violent offenders. Without services to protect and to support them when they are victims, offenders will get away with it.’
9:50 Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has said attacked the Government’s childhood obesity strategy – claiming the Prime Minister Theresa May has failed children.
Oliver said it was one of the ‘important pieces of work’ of a generation – but argued that it was delivered is the ’most unstrategic way’, the Daily Mail reports.
He said: ‘It could have been one of the most important pieces of work of our time, but instead it was prepared and delivered in the most underhand, insensitive, unstrategic way. Everything about it stinks of ‘we don’t care’. We need to face facts: this problem won’t go away unless we face it head on.
‘Theresa May did not ask for insight; she did not ask for perspective. It’s crystal clear to me that the health of our nation is absolutely not on the agenda for Mrs May and her Government.’
Oliver, who has been a leading campaigner for healthier eating in schools and also championed the introduction of a ‘sugar tax’, said there was some good ideas in the strategy but lamented the report’s lack of ambition – arguing that it was a chance to start to ‘remove the crippling financial burden from our NHS and reversing the tide of diet-related disease.’
