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Your budget has been cut – have a strawberry daiquiri

The health headlines on Thursday 27 October.

A Guardian survey on public service cuts has found that the GP services budget of £7.68 billion has fallen by 1.6% in the last year.

Far more is spent on diabetes by the NHS, about £9 billion, than on GP services and the number of people being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes has doubled in five years. Diabetes UK says that some three million adults and children now have the condition, after an increase of more than 117,000 in the past 12 months alone. Health experts blame the increase on rising levels of obesity, which is driven by junk food diets and a lack of exercise the Mail reports.

The Telegraph says women who undergo fertility treatment are at double the risk of developing ovarian problems including cancer later in life, according to research from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam.

The national confidential inquiry into patient outcome and death has found that more than a quarter of children who die after emergency NHS surgery in the UK have not received the best possible care. The Guardian says the group wants to see all hospitals operating on children become part of clinical networks, where they can share resources and skills. Even though it is recognised as good practice, only half the hospitals in the review were part of such a network.

The same paper reports that managers who fail to get hospitals ready to become foundation trusts by 2014 will be ‘removed and replaced', the health secretary has warned. Andrew Lansley said in a Reform think-tank speech that he had written to the chairs of all the remaining NHS trusts last autumn and got agreements on when they would be ‘clinically and financially sustainable', allowing them foundation status.

Meanwhile Mr Lansley's junior minister, Anne Milton, told the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee that the tax on stronger drinks could be increased, while that on low-alcohol varieties is reduced, but added that minimum prices would likely be illegal under EU law the Telegraph says.

If you worry about an upset stomach after a night on the stronger drink? Try drinking strawberry daiquiris, the Mail recommends. University of Barcelona researchers have discovered that strawberries can protect the stomach lining from alcohol, boosting hopes of improved treatment of stomach ulcers.