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Has the proverbial hit the fan for Lansley’s health reforms?

By Laura Passi

Our round-up of the health headlines on Monday 4 April.

The Prime Minister has stepped in to make key changes to ‘water down' the health and social care bill in a move that is said to have left poor old Andrew Lansley feeling ‘isolated' according to the Daily Telegraph. GPs who would prefer not to take charge of their local health budget will now not have to and safeguards will be put in place to prevent private firms cherry picking profitable services, claims the newspaper.

The Daily Mail has reported today that Ed Milliband will ‘accuse David Cameron of 'betraying' the NHS by giving the go-ahead to controversial health reforms.' Not only that but he will also ‘dismiss the Health and Social Care Bill as 'broken' and that the policy has descended into 'utter confusion and chaos,' before offering cross-party co-operation to develop replacement proposals.'

So there we go, exciting stuff, all the digest can say is watch this space, we will not leave you out of the loop on this one!

Numbers of people undergoing ‘long and arduous' surgery to give up on of their kidneys to a complete stranger are... on the rise. The Observer reported figures from the Human Tissue Authority show that the number of people who have donated organs altruistically has risen from 23 to 40 over the past year. Altruistic kidney donation was only legalised in 2006, and volunteers who donate can't put conditions on who the recipient will be.

Mark Moorhouse who donated a kidney last year said: ‘When you read about people with kidney failure talking about how they can't go on holiday, run around their garden with their grandchildren or even go to the shops, because dialysis rules their lives, if you put yourself into that position you would sit and pray that someone out there would do what I have done.'

The Independent explores the extraordinary story of Marini McNeilly, a ‘locked in' woman who has made medial history by ‘composing music through the power of thought alone.' Following a stroke in 2008, she was the first patient to trial a brain-computer music system. Using a cap lined with electrodes that detect patterns in her brain waves, she can control which instruments play and at what intensity by focusing on icons on a screen. The system is still under development, but shows signs of a bright future.

Spotted a story we've missed? Let us know, and we'll update the digest throughout the day...

Daily Digest