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#GPnews: Claims that Brexit would generate more money for NHS ‘not true’

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17:25 Elsewhere today, newly diagnosed cancer patients should be told to diet and exercise as evidence suggests weight loss could significantly decrease mortality rates, scientists have said at the world’s largest cancer forum in Chicago. 

A daily walk of 25 minutes was discovered to almost halve the mortality rate amongst breast cancer sufferers while a waistline larger than 35 inches increased mortality rates by one third, reports the Telegraph.

Professor Melinda Irwin, associate director of Cancer Prevention for Yale Cancer Center, said: ‘Diagnosis offers a window of opportunity, and diet and exercise can have a profound and powerful effect.’

16:05 It’s all about the EU referendum today and what implications the result could have for the NHS. 

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) have today shot down Justice Secretary and Vote Leave campaigner, Michael Gove’s claims that leaving the EU would free up £8bn more to spend on the NHS – a point he said was supported by IFS, reports the Guardian. 

Mr Gove reportedly said during a broadcast interview on Friday that a vote to leave the union ‘would allow us to get back the billions of pounds we send to the European Union, and spend it on the NHS.’ 

But the IFS have today refuted Mr Gove’s claim, adding: ‘Michael Gove claimed on Friday that the IFS had said that leaving the EU would free up £8 billion to spend on the NHS. We have not said that. We have looked carefully at the likely public finance implications. 

‘We conclude that the net UK contribution to the EU over the next few years is indeed likely to be about £8 billion a year, £8 billion which would become available for other things were we to leave. 

‘There is virtual unanimity among economic forecasters that the negative economic effect of leaving the EU would be greater than that. That is why we conclude that leaving the EU would not, as Michael Gove claims we said, leave more money to spend on the NHS. Rather it would leave us spending less on public services, or taxing more, or borrowing more.’

14:25 An app will go head-to-head against a doctor and nurse team this week to see which is quickest and most accurate at triaging patients, according to the Daily Mail.

The artificial intelligence programme, Check, is designed to ask a series of questions to tell patients what to do: should see their GP, call 999 or not worry, although it won’t make a formal diagnosis.

The developers, Babylon Health, think that artificial intelligence like this could transform medicine and according to the Daily Mail ‘the algorithm was developed with the help of more than 100 doctors, who repeatedly tested it and, so far, could not fault it.’

Steve Hamblin, head of Babylon’s artificial intelligence team, said: ‘As for replacing doctors, that’s not our goal. I’m not in the business of putting a doctor out of business. I’m in the business of giving them a boost.’

12:40 The health service in Wales will need an extra £246m a year by 2030 due to rising EU migration, the Vote Leave campaign has said. 

Conservative Monmouth MP David Davies, for Vote Leave Cymru, made the forecast adding that levels of migration envisioned by the group would place ‘huge pressure’ on the NHS in the coming years, the BBC reports

The Vote Leave campaign claimed that if Serbia and Turkey gained entry to the EU it could see the UK population grow by five million in the next 14 years. 

But the Wales Stronger in Europe chairman Geraint Talfan Davies told the BBC: ‘There are 100,000 EU citizens currently at work in our health service. They are not straining it, they are strengthening it, the key point to remember is that Wales gets back £245m a year more than it gives to Europe’.

11:00 Elsewhere this morning, new research has revealed that women are almost twice as likely to experience anxiety as men. 

The research, carried about by the University of Cambridge, also found that the condition affected four in 100 people, reports ITV News. 

The global study also found that people from Western Europe and North America are more likely to suffer from anxiety than people from other cultures – while women are almost twice as likely to be affected as men, and young individuals – both male and female – under 35 are disproportionately affected.

9:55 Former PM Sir John Major launched an outspoken attack on the ‘Leave’ campaign yesterday claiming an exit from the EU would leave the NHS ‘as safe as a pet hamster in the presence of a hungry python.’

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show, Sir Major added that if Leave campaigners Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith rose to power following Brexit, the NHS would be put at risk, adding that his fellow Tories’ whole campaign was ‘depressing and awful’. 

Sir Major went on to back up his claims insisting that ’Gove had wanted to previously privatise the NHS, Johnson wished to charge people for health services, while Duncan Smith advocated moving to a social insurance system.’

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