A Sky News investigation has found that some short-staffed hospitals are employing expensive locum agencies to supply nurses and doctors for the May Day bank holiday at rates of almost £150 an hour.
At Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals NHS Trust and at Southend NHS Trust more than three out of ten nurses were from agencies, and University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust paid £1,800 for a nurse to do a 12 hour shift.
The Guardian reports that abdominal fat is a more accurate predictor for type 2 diabetes than BMI, according to Public Health England advice.
The report states that men who measure more than 102cm around the middle are five times more likely to develop the disease and women with a waist measurement of more than 88cm are three times more likely to be diagnosed.
Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England said “Diabetes is a massive problem. It is getting clearer and clearer that it is a massive problem in England and the single best thing you can do to address it is to lose weight.”
And finally the Telegraph reports that the, now banned, pesticide DDT could have acted as a trigger for diabetes and obesity in the daughters of women who were exposed to the chemical while pregnant.
The study on mice exposed to concentrations of DDT, comparable to those found in Western countries before it was banned in the 1980s, had female offspring that stored more energy as fat.
Lead author Michele La Merrill said: ‘We found that DDT reduced female mice’s ability to generate heat. If you’re not generating as much heat as the next guy, instead of burning calories, you’re storing them.’
