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Not a single hospital sanctioned for GP workload ‘dump’, finds Pulse investigation
DH: Banning gluten-free food scripts ‘will save £10m’ worth of GP appointments
14:45 Some 20m British people are putting their health at risk by doing hardly an exercise at all, a report has warned.
According to the British Health Foundation’s Physical Inactivity and Sedentary Behavior Report 2017, masses of people are increasing their risk of developing potentially fatal cardiovascular disease by as much as 35%.
This comes as the Government is recommending at least 150 minutes of moderately intense physical activity a week, reports the Telegraph.
BHF associate medical director Dr Mike Knapton said: ‘Levels of physical inactivity and sedentary behaviour in the UK remain stubbornly high, and combined these two risk factors present a substantial threat to our cardiovascular health and risk of early death.’
11:55 Downgrading NHS treatment targets, as proposed by NHS England last week, could contravene patients’ legal rights under the NHS Constitution, the Labour Party has suggested.
Speaking yesterday on Sky’s Sophy Ridge show, Labour’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said he would write to health secretary Jeremy Hunt to seek urgent clarificaion of the legal advice he has received.
NHS England chief executive Simons Stevens last week suggested patients could wait longer for things like hip and knee replacements to favour funding of A&E departments.
But Mr Ashworth said the move was ‘utterly unacceptable’, and questioned whether the Government will be ‘amending the NHS Constitution to remove these rights from patients’.
He said: ‘Government ministers need to urgently clarify they are not breaching the NHS Constitution and must outline the consequences of denying patients their legal right to treatment within 18 weeks. As a first step the Secretary of State must publish his Department’s legal advice urgently.
‘Earlier this week NHS chiefs announced – without any public consultation or changes to the law – that the NHS will no longer be required to meet the 18 week treatment target because the financial crisis has got so bad.
‘It’s utterly unacceptable and a striking admission of how badly the Tories are running the NHS.’
10:00 The new nationwide meningitis B vaccination scheme will start ‘this year’, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced, after a deal was struck with GlaxoSmithKline to provide the vaccine.
The scheme to vaccinate all babies, first announced in 2014, has been delayed because of negotiations over costs, reports the BBC.
Although campaigners had warned the delay ‘put children’s lives at risk’, Mr Hunt said it was important to get value for money.
Mr Hunt said it was ‘disappointing’ that the deal had taken so long but added that he was ‘very proud that we will be the first country in the world to have a nationwide MenB vaccination programme’.
