Nhs

Is Jeremy Hunt spoiling for a fight with the wrong people? On the latest View from 22 podcast, Dr Clare Gerada debates this week’s Spectator cover feature on junior doctors with Fraser Nelson. Does the government have the right intentions about reforming the NHS? Why is the fight over working hours and pay for junior doctors proving so toxic? Are these doctors actually being offered an 11 per cent pay rise, or is this simply spin? And what does the row say about how the government is treating public sector employees? Christopher Buckley and Freddy Gray also discuss this week’s Republican presidential debate and whether Marco Rubio is the most likely candidate to receive the nomination. Is Donald Trump becoming a

You have probably never heard of Truvada, but it is a pharmacological breakthrough that has the potential to consign Aids to the history books. The drug effectively makes its users immune to the HIV virus. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration approved Truvada for use over three years ago. Truvada is even covered by insurance companies. It formed the backbone of New York’s HIV strategy, published this summer, which aims to halt the spread of the infection and reduce new HIV infections to near-zero by 2020. Yet in this country, a conspiracy of silence surrounds Truvada, or Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP), as it is termed. The NHS claims that

Pity Stewart Hosie, the SNP’s deputy leader. He appeared on the Daily Politics today to defend the party’s North Sea oil revenue projections and its record in government on health spending. He seemed rather unprepared. When questioned by Andrew Neil on the SNP’s comically inaccurate projections for oil revenue (it expected over £8 billion by now; only £500 million emerged), he was asked how on earth he would have filled that gap. Would he have cut spending by 14 per cent, raised taxes by 16 per cent — or a combination of the two? ‘We didn’t win the referendum, Andrew,’ he said — as if that were an answer. He then went

As a nation, we are learning to accept that our firemen are more and more redundant. The Fire Brigades Union fights austerity at every turn; its spokesmen say that every reduction in station numbers or jobs is a threat to public safety. One of their campaign posters even showed David Cameron and George Osborne alongside the words, ‘They slash. You burn.’ But the statistics undermine the union’s manipulative language of doom. The cuts have been matched by a continuing decline in dangerous fires. According to figures released at the end of last month, the fire brigades attended 495,000 incidents in the year 2014–15, a decrease of 42 per cent compared

For too long, Westminster has overlooked mental health. It has been languishing in funding obscurity for decades as a forgotten arm of the NHS. But thankfully, there was a shift in priorities during the last Parliament as all political parties woke up to the importance of providing good mental health care. The issue rose so far up the policy agenda that the merits of different types of long-term psychotherapy became the subject of repeated and impassioned debate in the Cabinet Office. All parties have realised that mental ill-health is a problem that affects everyone. Currently one in four people struggle with mental health issues every year and the number is

Well, it’s fair to say that Jeremy Hunt’s going to have a fun time at the next doctors’ conference he attends. There’s the #Iminworkjeremy trend on social media of furious doctors pointing out that they already work at weekends, and are not playing golf, as they believe the Health Secretary claimed. There’s the multiple petitions calling on the Health Secretary to resign, be sacked, or be subject to a vote of no confident in Parliament. And there are the furious op-eds from doctors who feel completely undervalued. Now, doctors do work weekends, and they also work twilight shifts and long weeks of nights, and they also have to certify people as dead

Insomnia has a lot to answer for. I have not been sleeping well for years but a few months ago I stopped sleeping at all. By that I don’t mean I sleep a little bit. I mean I sleep never. And since I stopped sleeping, I have been teetering on a knife-edge. It is, I can reveal, barely possible to behave in accordance with the law if you have had no sleep for a significant time. I suspect a large proportion of the prison population just needed a sleeping pill to make them into responsible citizens. As for women’s prisons, they must be jam-packed with menopausal desperados needing HRT whose

Not long ago, I woke up in hospital, in pain, with a damaged back, but grateful for the sleep that a couple of doses of morphine had secured. ‘Morning,’ said a sixtysomething man who appeared by the side of the bed. ‘I’m Derek, I’m a volunteer here.’ ‘Hello Derek.’ ‘I’ve bought you some cornflakes.’ I wanted to hug him. ‘Also…’ He produced a sheet of paper. Oh no. ‘There are a few questions here about how you’ve found your stay with us. I can fill them in for you if you want…’ Luckily I was too weak to get angry. ‘Could you just leave it there, Derek? I might look