thepoke--2019-04-08--Nigel Farage told people to ignore the World Health Organization 11 sick burns

Nigel Farage told people to ignore the World Health Organization – 11 sick burns

The World Health Organization is the United Nations agency that promotes public health, performing and collating the best research, carrying out vaccination drives and generally looking out for people. They recently posted a celebratory tweet about a development at the Vatican.  Great news for the people who work in and around the Vatican, bad news for *checks notes* Nigel Farage.  It’s the old “We’ve had enough of experts” rhetoric, so prominent during the Leave campaign, so we shouldn’t be surprised. Some people were very much in favour of Nigel Farage ignoring medical advice.  Some pointed out why he should pay better attention.  A lot more just took the piss.  Twitter user Christopher C noticed the irony of a man telling people they should listen to him when he tells them not to listen to someone.


upi--2019-11-13--1st Ebola vaccine gets full approval from World Health Organization

Nov. 13 (UPI) -- The World Health Organization has approved the world's first Ebola vaccine amid history's second largest outbreak of the disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  WHO prequalified the inoculation Tuesday, which means it meets the agency's standards for quality and safety, and it can now be made available in at-risk countries. The step came less than 48 hours after the European Commission grated a conditional marketing authorization for the vaccine.  "This is a historic step towards ensuring the people who most need it are able to access this life-saving vaccine," said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general. "Five years ago, we had no vaccine and no therapeutics for Ebola. With a prequalified vaccine and experimental therapeutics, Ebola is now preventable and treatable."  The vaccine, called Ervebo, is manufactured by Merck. It and another vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, were already being used under a compassionate use protocol. Ervebo is now approved for clinical use.  WHO said it accelerated the prequalification process for the vaccine because of the "urgent public health need," particularly in Africa. The DRC's current epidemic began Aug. 1, 2018, and has caused 2,192 deaths and sickened 1,067 others as of Wednesday, the DRC Ministry of Health said.  Formerly known as hemorrhagic fever, the Ebola virus is transmitted from wild animals to humans, and then is spread among humans during contact with bodily fluids. The average mortality rate of the disease is 50 percent.


wakingtimes--2019-02-15--World Health Organization Recognizes Cannabis as a Medicine and Proposes More Rational Drug Laws

World Health Organization Recognizes Cannabis as a Medicine and Proposes ‘More Rational’ Drug Laws

The World Health Organization (WHO) has finally recognized cannabis as a medicine and has formally proposed that legislators take a “more rational” approach to drug laws.  The WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) has proposed that cannabis be rescheduled in light of recent scientific findings that show a wide range of medical uses for the plant. The panel also proposed that non-psychoactive cannabis products like CBD should be entirely removed from international drug controls.  Last November, the committee had their first formal discussion about cannabis laws since the International Drug Control Conventions in 1961. According to a 2019 press release that summarized the meeting:  This recommendation does not automatically mean that the laws will change everywhere immediately, but these decisions are often very good indications of the policy that many lawmakers will follow.  Ethan Russo of the International Cannabis and Cannabinoids Institute told Newsweek that cannabis advocates see this as a major win in the fight for legalization.  “These recommendations are of monumental importance as they may lead to the overcoming of barriers to research, enhance access of patients to cannabis-based medicine, and allow free commerce of cannabis products internationally,” Russo says.  A 2015 study, published in the journal, ‘Scientific Reports,’ suggests that smoking cannabis is roughly 114 times safer than drinking alcohol. Ironically, out of all the drugs that were researched in the study, alcohol was actually the most dangerous, and it was the only legal drug on the list.  A study published last year by researchers at the University of Michigan has shown that cannabis use among teens and college students is increasing while alcohol and tobacco use is declining. In fact, for the first time ever, the rate of daily cannabis use has now surpassed the rate of daily cigarette use. This is a great discovery considering the fact that cigarettes and alcohol kill tens of thousands a year while marijuana kills no one.  Earlier this month, Truth Theory reported that CBS blocked a pro-cannabis advertisement from appearing on the super bowl this year, turning down a $5 million deal. CBS responded to the proposal by saying that they do not accept ads on cannabis, and they do not know of any other channel that does. Despite new findings that cannabis can be a powerful medicine, it continues to be a controversial topic in mainstream circles.  John Vibes is an author and journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture, and focuses solutions-oriented approaches to social problems. He is also a host of The Free Your Mind Conference and The Free Thought Project Podcast.  **This article (WHO Recognizes Cannabis as a Medicine and Proposes ‘More Rational’ Drug Laws) was originally featured at Truth Theory and is re-posted here with permission.**


ageofautism--2019-08-20--Review of the United Kingdom National Health Service webpage Why vaccination is safe and important

Review of the United Kingdom National Health Service webpage ‘Why vaccination is safe and important’ (media reviewed 30 July 2019).

“(Vaccines) get safety tested for years before being introduced - they're also monitored for any side effects”  Another statement apparently contradicts the proposition that there is anything inherently safe about vaccinating:  It is not clear what the evidential basis is for this statement. Formerly, at least, British health officials were keen to cite a paper by Offit et al (2002) which suggested absurdly an infant could withstand 10,000 vaccines at a time. However far-fetched, this was based on a theoretical claim about routine exposure to environmental antigens. Evidently some environmental exposures are more dangerous than others, otherwise people would not be at risk from infectious diseases at all, but the basis of exposure through vaccination is different (injected), and involves adjuvants so it is perhaps not relevant at all to talk about the number of antigens (as in Offit). In August 2004 Dr Salisbury distinguished in an e-letter to me between the increased risk of adverse reactions in an extended schedule and “overload”, which begs the question what is meant by “overload” and what people are supposed to understand by such a statement. A paper by Aaby et al (2012) was entitled “Vaccine programmes must consider their effect on general resistance”, which is evidently a warning that there is no such blank cheque for expanding the schedule. I covered this ground in my published submission to the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into anti-microbial resistance last year [2]. The NHS need to clarify what they mean, but also state what the evidential basis is for this claim.  “(Vaccines) do not overload or weaken the immune system - it's safe to give children several vaccines at a time and this reduces the amount of injections they need”  I am responding to claims or statements in this web-document ' Why vaccination is safe and important' [1] (not following the original order of presentation).  As Britain's new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, calls for reassuring messaging about vaccination on the web, AoA's British editor looks at an NHS web-page on vaccination safety and finds it full of holes. Unfortunately, the problems with the vaccine program do not lie with its critics. A copy of this review will be sent to the NHS web editors.  This touches on the reality that vaccines are industrial products which might cause harm. Recently, the issue of how well or thoroughly vaccines are tested for safety before marketing has come under scrutiny. People are told (for example in GCSE biology) that the gold standard for the scientific testing of products is a double blind placebo trial but a lesser standard seems to routinely obtain with vaccines. A letter from a US charity Informed Consent Action Network to the US Department of Human Health Services noted that not only were there no vaccines on the US schedule which had been safety tested against placebo but also none which had been tested against earlier products which had been safety tested against placebo [3]. A correspondence in on-line British Medical Journal which involved Heidi Larson of the Vaccine Confidence Project, Paul Offit and Stanley Plotkin failed to establish the existence of thorough safety testing before marketing on the UK schedule, or the existence of any double-blind placebo safety trials - even when challenged by two leading medical scientists, Christopher Exley and David Healey [4-6]. The NHS needs to be clearer on what level of safety testing has actually taken place. The statement that vaccines “get safety tested for years before being introduced” while disarmingly vague does not offer real reassurance.  The statement “they’re also monitored for any side-effects” is also problematic and potentially misleading. In the first place the MHRA (the United Kingdom licensing agency) does not actively monitor side-effects at all but does receive yellow card reports: this is only a passive reporting system. Historically speaking the MHRA is not known to act on these reports and this came under particular scrutiny last year in the British Medical Journal over the swine flu episode of 2009 when the MHRA failed to pick up signals regarding GSK’s vaccine Pandemrix and narcolepsy which had been identified in two Scandinavian countries [7-12]. In order to detect long-term harm the MHRA would also have to follow up on yellow card reports with patients after a time gap which is not their policy. As reported by the House of Commons Health Committee in 2005 the MHRA is hopelessly conflicted [13].  “(vaccines) do not cause allergies or any other conditions…”  is not compatible even with the information in package inserts. The NHS is obliged to make clear the risks of medical interventions to the patient or their representatives under the Montgomery ruling of 2015 which would include drawing their attention to complications in vaccine package inserts [14]. Such a blanket statement is incompatible with this ruling, nor should it be up to health officials to decide what people should be told or not told.  “all the current evidence tells us that vaccinating is safer than not vaccinating”  is vague and not conditional on anything. It may not be safer with some people with some products in some conditions, and therefore is either not true or has no meaning.  “(vaccines) do not contain mercury (thiomersal)”  needs to be qualified. The annual letter on the flu shot for 2019-20 states (p.15) [15]:  “None of the influenza vaccines contain thiomersal as an added preservative"  which implies the presence thiomersal in the preparation of at least some products at continuing reduced levels.  And further down we read:  “Vaccines sometimes contain other ingredients that make the vaccine safe and more effective…There is no evidence that any of these ingredients cause harm when used in such small amounts.”  Just taking the example of aluminium there is in fact by now a large mainstream scientific literature either questioning the safety of aluminium adjuvants or indeed asserting their danger. The present statement puts the NHS in an invidious position [16-24]. Either the authors are unaware of this developing concern or have dismissed it out of hand, but it is not correct or accurate to tell the public that there is no evidence. Furthermore, comparison with ingested aluminium on the link is inappropriate and misleading since even if it was good to eat or drink aluminium (the examples used) adjuvanted vaccines are injected and bypass the digestive system. It is also palpably contradictory to claim that a substance which is present in sufficient quantities to be an active ingredient could not also pose a risk.  Again, this is a loosely couched statement:  “(vaccines) do not cause autism - studies have found no evidence of a link between the MMR vaccine and autism”  On the one hand the apparent elision of vaccines as a class with MMR is misleading, while the fact that some studies may not have found something is insufficient grounds for saying it does not happen. When, last year, I queried the evidence base for general MMR safety the CMO cited only the review by Taylor (2014) which was restricted to the issue of autism, MMR and thimerosal – there were just six MMR studies, the first of which was published a full fourteen years after MMR was first introduced the British schedule (when the issue was already highly contentious) and which perhaps only closed the door after the horse had bolted. It does not answer the ethical problem of what evidence health officials had that the products were safe at the time of introduction. Indeed we know that the most favoured MMR product in 1988, SKB’s Pluserix, was already withdrawn in Canada at the time [25, 26].  While our health officials have succeeded in not finding a connection between the vaccine programme they promote and autism they also have no explanation for the rise of autism from 0.2% for those born 1984-8 and the 3.3% rate recorded in Northern Ireland schools earlier this year [27,28]: they have neither predicted it, nor can they explain it while every day the reports of chaos pile up [29]. The United States government in its Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, however, have acknowledged the connection between vaccines and autism on a number of occasions.  The HHS HRSA told journalists Sharyl Attkisson and David Kirby on separate occasions [30,31]:  "The government has never compensated, nor has it ever been ordered to compensate, any case based on a determination that autism was actually caused by vaccines. We have compensated cases in which children exhibited an encephalopathy, or general brain disease. Encephalopathy may be accompanied by a medical progression of an array of symptoms including autistic behavior, autism, or seizures."  And CDC director Julie Gerberding admitted to CNN following the Hannah Poling settlement [32]:  "Now, we all know that vaccines can occasionally cause fevers in kids. So if a child was immunized, got a fever, had other complications from the vaccines. And if you’re predisposed with the mitochondrial disorder, it can certainly set off some damage. Some of the symptoms can be symptoms that have characteristics of autism…"  An investigation into US vaccine injury court in 2011 found 83 cases of compensated vaccine injury in which autism is mentioned, but which because they are sealed cannot be used as precedents [33]. In an unsealed ruling relating to autism it is stated [34]:  “The Court found, supra, that Bailey’s ADEM was both caused-in-fact and proximately caused by his vaccination. It is well-understood that the vaccination at issue can cause ADEM, and the Court found, based upon a full reading and hearing of the pertinent facts in this case, that it did actually cause the ADEM. Furthermore, Bailey’s ADEM was severe enough to cause lasting, residual damage, and retarded his developmental progress, which fits under the generalized heading of Pervasive Developmental Delay, or PDD. The Court found that Bailey would not have suffered this delay but for the administration of the MMR vaccine, and that this chain of causation was not too remote, but was rather a proximate sequence of cause and effect leading inexorably from vaccination to Pervasive Developmental Delay.”  “If 95% of children receive the MMR vaccine, it's possible to get rid of measles.”  is likely false, because of the waning effectiveness of the vaccine [35-45].  CONCLUSION This is not intended to be a comprehensive review of claims made on the web-page. The point should made that though the page disparages less favourable discussion of the programme found elsewhere on the web it is itself full of loose statements and weak documentation. Reading it an educated public might not be wholly to blame if they were not completely convinced.  [2] Written evidence from John Stone (Age of Autism), House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee Inquiry into Antimicrobial Resistance, http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/health-and-social-care-committee/antimicrobial-resistance/written/86156.pdf  [3] Letter to Department of Human Health Services (Secretary Azar and Acting Director Beckham) from Informed Consent Action Network (Del Bigtree), https://www.icandecide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ICAN-Reply-1.pdf  [4] Christopher Exley, 'Re: Vaccine safety: British are less sceptical than Europeans, but younger people need assurance', https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l4291/rr-3  [5] David Healy, ''Re: Vaccine safety: British are less sceptical than Europeans, but younger people need assurance', 27 June 2019,27 June 2019, https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l4291/rr-4  [7] Peter Doshi, ‘Pandemrix vaccine: why was the public not told of early warning signs?’, BMJ 2018; 362 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3948 (Published 20 September 2018)  [11] Clifford G Miller, ‘Re: A tale of two vaccines - MHRA - 6 Reports of "rare" suspected ADR in 60 days ignored’, 18 october 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rr-21  [12] Clifford G Miller, ‘Re: A tale of two vaccines - MHRA Had 178 Pandemrix Altered Consciousness Adverse Event Reports in 67 Days’, 23 October 2018, https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k4152/rr-23  [13] “The industry is by no means solely to blame for the difficulties we describe. The regulators and prescribers are also open to criticism. The regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has failed to adequately scrutinise licensing dataand its post-marketing surveillance is inadequate. The MHRA Chairman stated that trust was integral to effective regulation, but trust, while convenient, may mean that the regulatory process is not strict enough. The organisation has been too close to the industry, a closeness underpinned by common policy objectives, agreed processes, frequent contact, consultation and interchange of staff. We are concerned that a rather lax regime is exacerbated by the MHRA’s need to compete with other European regulators for licence application business.’  House of Commons Health Commttee, ‘The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Indiustry”, 2005, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhealth/42/42.pdf  [16] Jørgensen L, Gøtzsche PC, Jefferson T.'The Cochrane HPV vaccine review was incomplete and ignored important evidence of bias', BMJ Evid Based Med. 2018 Oct;23(5):165-168. doi: 10.1136/bmjebm-2018-111012. Epub 2018 Jul 27  [17] Lars Jørgensen, Peter Doshi, Peter Gøtzsche, Tom Jefferson, 'Challenges of independent assessment of potential harms of HPV vaccines', BMJ 2018; 362 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k3694 (Published 24 September 2018)  [18] Emma Shardlow, Matthew Mold and Christopher Exley, 'Unraveling the enigma: elucidating the relationship between the physicochemical properties of aluminium-based adjuvants and their immunological mechanisms of action,', 7 November 2018, Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology201814:80 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13223-018-0305-2  [19] Lee SH, 'Detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) L1 gene DNA possibly bound to particulate aluminum adjuvant in the HPV vaccine Gardasil, J Inorg Biochem. 2012 Dec;117:85-92. doi: 10.1016/j.jinorgbio.2012.08.015. Epub 2012 Aug 30.  [20] Lee SH, 'Melting profiles may affect detection of residual HPV L1 gene DNA fragments in Gardasil®.', Curr Med Chem. 2014 Mar;21(7):932-40.  [21] Mary Holland, Kim Mack Rosenberg and Eileen Iorio, 'The HPV Vaccine On Trial: Seeking Justice for a Generation Betrayed' with an introduction by Luc Montagnier, Skyhorse, 2 October 2018  [22] Peter Doshi, Tom Jefferson, Mark Jones, Kyungwan Hong, Larissa Shamseer, Haeyoung Lee, O’Mareen Spence, Florence Bourgeois, 'Call to action: RIAT restoration of a previously unpublished methodology in Gardasil vaccine trials', 11 January 2019, https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2865/rr-7  [23] Gerwyn Morris, Basant K. Puri, and Richard E. Frye, ‘The putative role of environmental aluminium in the development of chronic neuropathology in adults and children. How strong is the evidence and what could be the mechanisms involved?’ Metab Brain Dis. 2017; 32(5): 1335–1355. Published online 2017 Jul 27. doi: 10.1007/s11011-017-0077-2, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5596046/  [24] Matthew Mold, Dorcas Umar, Andrew King, Christopher Exley, ‘Aluminium in brain tissue in autism’, Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology Volume 46, March 2018, Pages 76-82, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X17308763  [27] Metzler et al, 'The mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain' National Statistics 1999, p.33 Table 4.1 'Prevalence of Mental Disorders', Pervasive development disorder is listed under 'less common disorders', http://www.dawba.com/abstracts/B-CAMHS99_original_survey_report.pdf  [28] Ian Waugh, The Prevalence of Autism (including Asperger Syndrome) in School Age Children in Northern Ireland 2019', Information Analysis Directorate May 2019, https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/health/asd-children-ni-2019.pdf  [29] Chaminda Jayanetti, ‘Special educational needs crisis deepens as councils bust their budgets…Observer investigation reveals 30% rise in overspending against backdrop of a failure to meet demand for services’, Observer 18 August 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/18/special-educational-needs-councils-in-crisis-budget-overspends-rocket  [33] Mary Holland, Louis Conte, Robert Krakow and Lisa Colin, ‘Unanswered Questions: A Review of Compensated Cases of Vaccine-Induced Brain Injury’, Pace Environmental Law Review, vol. 28, no. 2, 2011, https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/pelr/vol28/iss2/6/  [35] Markowitz LE, Albrecht P, Rhodes P, Demonteverde R, Swint E, Maes EF, Powell C, Patriarca PA., 'Changing levels of measles antibody titers in women and children in the United States: impact on response to vaccination. Kaiser Permanente Measles Vaccine Trial Team.', Pediatrics. 1996 Jan;97(1):53-8., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8545224  [37] Sandra Waaijenborg, Susan J. M. Hahné, Liesbeth Mollema, Gaby P. Smits, Guy A. M. Berbers, Fiona R. M. van der Klis, Hester E. de Melker, and Jacco Wallinga, 'Waning of Maternal Antibodies Against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella in Communities With Contrasting Vaccination Coverage', J Infect Dis. 2013 Jul 1; 208(1): 10–16.  [38] Zhao et al, 'Low titers of measles antibody in mothers whose infants suffered from measles before eligible age for measles vaccination' Virol J. 2010; 7: 87., Published online 2010 May 6. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-7-87  [39] Kang et al, 'An increasing, potentially measles-susceptible population over time after vaccination in Korea', VaccineVolume 35, Issue 33, 24 July 2017, Pages 4126-4132, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X17308551  [40] Fiebelkorn et al, 'Measles virus neutralizing antibody response, cell-mediated immunity, and IgG antibody avidity before and after a third dose of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in young adults', J Infect Dis. 2016 Apr 1; 213(7): 1115–1123.  [41] Paunio et al, 'Secondary measles vaccine failures identified by measurement of IgG avidity: high occurrence among teenagers vaccinated at a young age', Epidemiol Infect. 2000 Apr;124(2):263-71.,https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l2359/rr-0  [42] Rosen JB, Rota JS, Hickman CJ, Sowers SB, Mercader S, Rota PA, Bellini WJ, Huang AJ, Doll MK, Zucker JR, Zimmerman CM., 'Outbreak of measles among persons with prior evidence of immunity, New York City, 2011', Clin Infect Dis. 2014 May;58(9):1205-10. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciu105. Epub 2014 Feb 27  [43] Felicia Roy, Lillian Mendoza, Joanne Hiebert, Rebecca J. McNall, Bettina Bankamp, Sarah Connolly, Amy Lüdde, Nicole Friedrich, Annette Mankertz, Paul A. Rota, Alberto Severini , 'Rapid Identification of Measles Virus Vaccine Genotype by Real-Time PCR' https://jcm.asm.org/content/55/3/735 "Of the 194 measles virus sequences obtained in the United States in 2015, 73 were identified as vaccine sequences (RJ McNall, unpublished data)".  [44] Rosen JB, Rota JS, Hickman CJ, Sowers SB, Mercader S, Rota PA, Bellini WJ, Huang AJ, Doll MK, Zucker JR, Zimmerman CM., 'Outbreak of measles among persons with prior evidence of immunity, New York City, 2011', Clin Infect Dis. 2014 May;58(9):1205-10. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciu105. Epub 2014 Feb 27  [45] Gregory A. Poland and Robert M. Jacobson, ‘The Re-Emergence of Measles in Developed Countries: Time to Develop the Next-Generation Measles Vaccines?’, Vaccine. 2012 Jan 5; 30(2): 103–104., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3905323/


bbc--2019-11-18--UK PM shelves tax cut to help health service

Planned cuts to corporation tax next April are to be put on hold, Boris Johnson has said, with the money being spent on the NHS and other services.  The rate paid by firms on their profits was due to fall from 19% to 17%.  But the PM told business leaders it may cost the Treasury £6bn and this was better spent on "national priorities", including the health service.  Labour said business "handouts" had done real damage and the Tories would "revert to type" after the election.  The announcement does not mean any new money for the NHS, on top of the £20bn extra a year the Conservatives are promising to give it up to 2023. The BBC understands the cash will be used, in part, to fund existing pledges on GP training.  With just over three weeks to go before the 12 December election, the leaders of the three largest parties in England have been parading their business credentials at the CBI conference. • Does cutting corporation tax always raise more money?  Jeremy Corbyn said business had "so much to gain" from a Labour victory in terms of investment while Jo Swinson said the Liberal Democrats were the "natural party of business" because they wanted to cancel Brexit.  Addressing the audience of top executives and entrepreneurs, Mr Johnson said they had "created the wealth that actually pays for the NHS".  Stressing his party's "emphatic belief in fiscal prudence", he said he had decided against going ahead with a further cut in corporation tax, a step first proposed by Chancellor George Osborne in 2016 to boost business in the wake of the Brexit referendum.  Mr Johnson said the UK already had the lowest rate of corporation tax of "any major economy" and further cuts would be "postponed".  "Before you storm the stage, let me remind you that this saves £6bn that we can put into the priorities of the British people including the NHS," he told the audience.  Corporation tax is an important revenue-raiser, making up approximately 9% of the UK government's total tax take. The amount raised by the tax has risen by two-thirds in the past decade, as the rate has fallen from 28% to 19% and economic conditions have improved.  But many economists said the latest cut would be potentially counter-productive in terms of tax yields, with a study based on HMRC data last year suggesting it could mean £6bn a year in lost government revenues.  In response, CBI director Carolyn Fairbairn said the move could "work for the country if it is backed by further efforts to the costs of doing business and promote growth".  Blink and you might have missed it, but the PM has just announced the single biggest tax-raising measure of the campaign so far.  The overnight headlines about Boris Johnson's CBI speech were about a £1bn cut to business taxes. It pays to read the small print.  All together, this leaves an extra £5bn a year for the Conservative manifesto to deploy in extra spending or, as seems likely, some crowd-pleasing pre-election personal tax cuts.  I'm told the corporation tax move was Chancellor Sajid Javid's idea, and was discussed during plans for his aborted Budget earlier this month. The PM also confirmed Mr Javid would remain in post if he wins the election next month.  Cancelling the cut still leaves the UK with the lowest corporation tax rate in the G20, although not as low as Switzerland or Singapore.  Given the government's argument has long been that cuts to corporation tax raise revenue, it is interesting to see the PM now say that cancelling cuts will also raise revenue.  It is meant to show clear blue water between the Conservatives and Labour on fiscal credibility. In the event, there was barely a squeak out of the CBI audience about a significant multi-billion pound tax change.  Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said Monday's freeze marked a "temporary pause in the Tories' race to the bottom" on business taxes.  Labour's plan has been to raise corporation tax to 26% - the 2011 level - which it says will generate billions to be spent on its priorities, including health and education.  Turning to Brexit, the Conservative leader told the conference that while big business did not want the UK to leave the EU, his withdrawal deal would provide the certainty "that you want now and have wanted for some time". • POLICY GUIDE: Who should I vote for? • POLLS: How are the parties doing? • A TO Z: Our tool to explain election words • REGISTER: What you need to do to vote  If elected with a Commons majority, Mr Johnson is hoping to get the agreement on the terms of the UK's exit into law by 31 January, and begin talks with Brussels on a permanent trading relationship.  He also announced a review of business rates in England, with the aim of reducing the overall burden of the tax, as well as a cut in National Insurance contributions for employers, which already benefit from a reduction known as the employment allowance.  In his address, Mr Corbyn said business had nothing to fear from a Labour government, arguing that while the richest would pay more, there would also be "more investment than you have ever dreamt of".  He said he would "make no apologies" for the party's plan to take rail, mail, water and broadband delivery into public ownership, saying it was "not an attack" on the free market and would bring the UK in line with the continent. • Business rates: My bill went from £560 to £7,760 • Why does Labour want to give away free broadband?  "It is sometimes claimed I am anti-business," he said. "This is nonsense. It is not nonsense to be against poverty pay. It is not nonsense to say the largest corporations should pay their taxes, just as small companies do.  "It is not anti-business to want prosperity in every part of the country."  The Labour leader also set out plans to train about 320,000 apprentices in jobs such as construction, manufacturing and design within the renewable energy, transport and forestry sectors.  Ms Fairbairn said the business community shared Labour's desire to increased investment but warned the opposition's "massive instincts towards state intervention and ownership" put that at risk.  In her first address to the CBI as leader of her party, Ms Swinson said no-one claiming to want to "get Brexit sorted" was on the side of business, due to the negative impact she said it would have on investment and access to labour.  "With Boris Johnson in the pocket of Nigel Farage and Jeremy Corbyn stuck in the 1970s, we are the only one standing up for you," she said.  She said her party would go further than the others and replace "crippling" business rates with a levy paid by commercial landlords based on land value, which she suggested would help "rescue the High Street".  Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, who is not attending the CBI event, said politicians' focus should be on helping small business and promoting what he claimed were the advantages of a no-deal Brexit.  Do you have any questions about the forthcoming election?  In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name, age and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions.  Use this form to ask your question:


bbcuk--2019-04-10--Childrens mental health services postcode lottery

Children's mental health services 'postcode lottery'

Spending on children's mental health services - such as school counsellors and drop-in centres - has fallen in real terms in more than a third of areas in England, a report shows.  The study, by the Children's Commissioner, found spending had risen by 17% overall but many children faced a "postcode lottery" of provision.  Anne Longfield said the figures were "extremely worrying".  Officials said investing in these services was a priority.  The report looked at spending on so-called "low level" mental health services - designed to prevent or treat problems such as depression, eating disorders or anxiety - preventing the need for intensive, specialist intervention.  In general, half the funding comes from the NHS and half from local authorities. The report found that very high-spending areas were masking a larger proportion of low-spending areas, and that wide variations existed across the country.  According to the report:  Ms Longfield said: "This report reveals for the first time the postcode lottery facing the increasing number of children suffering from low-level mental health conditions like anxiety and depression.  "The children I speak to who are suffering from conditions like anxiety or depression aren't asking for intensive inpatient therapeutic treatment, they just want to be able to talk to a counsellor about their worries and to be offered advice on how to stop their problems turning into a crisis."  A statement from the Department of Health and Social Care said government plans would allow 70,000 more children a year to have access to specialist mental health care by 2020-21.  "Early intervention is vital and we're going further, piloting a four-week waiting time standard for treatment, training a brand new dedicated mental health workforce for schools across the country, and teaching pupils what good mental and physical health looks like."  The charity YoungMinds said some young people found support from youth workers and school counsellors life-saving and the situation was deeply concerning.  Emma Thomas, the charity's chief executive, added: "While extra money for specialist NHS services is of course welcome, it's better for everyone if young people can get help before their needs escalate or they hit crisis point."  Have you or has someone whom you know been affected? If willing to share your story, please mail haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your experience.  Please include a contact number if you are willing to speak to a BBC journalist. You can also contact us in the following ways:


bbcuk--2019-11-04--General Election 2019: Don't politicise health service - NHS boss

Parties should not use the NHS as "a political weapon" in the election campaign, health service bosses say.  NHS Providers chief Chris Hopson said "over-dramatising NHS difficulties" or making "disingenuous" funding claims did the service "no favours".  Both the Tories and Labour are vowing to spend billions to improve care.  But Mr Hopson, who acts for health trust leaders in England, urged parties not to make "empty promises" or create "unrealistic expectations".  The long-term future of the NHS and social care is likely to be a key battleground in the run-up to the 12 December election.  The Tories are expected to trumpet extra spending on the health service in England, including a £2.7bn investment for six hospitals over five years and £100m for a further 34 hospitals to start developing future projects.  This is on top of an extra £20bn in funding agreed by Theresa May's government up to 2023. • Could the NHS be 'up for sale' to US companies? • A really simple guide to the election • How much does a general election cost?  Labour argues the NHS is reeling from the tightest funding squeeze in modern history since 2010, which it says has left nearly four and half million people waiting for treatment and seen thousands of cancelled operations last year.  Jeremy Corbyn has said he will end austerity in the NHS via a "proper funding settlement", with the exact details to be announced ahead of the launch of the party's manifesto.  Mr Hopson called for a "proper, mature, evidence-based" debate on what the NHS needs.  "Let's not resort to the cheap political slogans and skimming across the top which is what we've seen over the last four or five elections," he told the BBC's Today programme.  Writing on the Times website, he said it was understandable that during election campaigns politicians should "cast themselves as champions and defenders of the NHS".  However, he warned "it becomes counter-productive when the NHS is used as a political weapon" - something he said leaders in the health service were worried was already starting to happen in this campaign.  It is unrealistic to expect the parties to dial down their highly-charged debates on the subject.  But NHS Providers argues that already things are getting out of hand with signs that the NHS is being "weaponised".  Underlying all this is a warning that the NHS in England cannot seem to keep up with growing demand for care, which is "particularly worrying" with winter looming.  Hospital chiefs are known to be concerned that there was intense pressure in recent weeks before winter had really set in. How that pressure develops before polling day could be a major issue in this campaign.  While there were areas where "the NHS is falling short", he said "over-dramatising or distorting the difficulties for political ends will do nothing to help those frontline staff who are working flat out for patients".  And Carrie MacEwen, from the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, said undeliverable promises "simply set up the NHS to fail".  "The NHS's role is to manage the health of the nation, not to be used as a tool to swing voters in a three-way marginal," she told the Times. "Our fear is in these febrile times we will see irrational, undeliverable promises or even outright lies."  Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he agreed that the NHS "shouldn't be weaponised" during the election campaign but voters deserved an "honest debate about it."  Speaking after a visit to Unison headquarters to meet NHS staff, he also repeated that under a Labour government, the health service would be "brought back in house" when privatised contracts "come to an end". • Public spending 'to rocket' in next parliament • Who has selected the most women as candidates? • Poll tracker: How do the parties compare?  The Tories have repudiated Labour claims that privatisation has exploded in recent years, pointing to figures showing the total number of private contracts has remained static at 7% in the past four years.  Health Secretary Matt Hancock accused Labour of peddling "scare stories" to try and win votes because they have "nothing positive to offer".  "These stories worry some of the most vulnerable people in the country, who the Labour Party used to say they represented," he said in a video message on Twitter. "It is only with the Conservatives, with our strong support for the economy, that we can make sure the health service is always there for you and your family."  But former Conservative health secretary Stephen Dorrell, who is standing as a Lib Dem candidate in the election, said both the main parties were driven by ideology when it came to the issue.  The NHS, he told the BBC Radio 4's World at One, was a "perfect example of a place where our economy works best when the public and private work together".  Do you have any other questions about the election in the UK?  In some cases your question will be published, displaying your name and location as you provide it, unless you state otherwise. Your contact details will never be published. Please ensure you have read the terms and conditions.  Use this form to ask your question:


bbcuk--2019-12-03--NHS: Donald Trump on the UK's National Health Service

Speaking in London at the 70th anniversary of Nato, Donald Trump said that the UK's National Health Service, the NHS, is not on the trade talk table.  But during a news conference with Theresa May in June, he said something very different.


bbcuk--2019-12-04--Health strike: NI Secretary Julian Smith says health service crisis is unacceptable

The crisis in Northern Ireland's health service is "unacceptable", NI Secretary Julian Smith has said, as industrial action by healthcare workers continues.  Mr Smith was speaking during a visit to Belfast where he met members of the NI Civil Service and trade unions.  He said he was "extremely sorry" that the strike was affecting patients, families and workers.  Health workers are protesting at pay and staffing levels which they claim are "unsafe".  The union, Unison, that represents more than 6,500 registered nurses and 3,500 health care assistants, has called for "compromise and money on the table". • 'It feels like someone sawing into my hip'  Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government since January 2017 when the power-sharing parties - the DUP and Sinn Féin - split after a bitter row.  Mr Smith said he would have more conversations both with the NI Civil Service and the unions over the coming days.  "This area of health is a devolved matter so the decisions have to be taken by the NI Civil Service, they are working in difficult circumstances because Stormont's not running.  "But I am working with them to see if we can find a way through."  He added that the situation was "unacceptable" and that he would "do whatever I can within the powers I have to help the NI Civil Service move this forward".  However, when asked about the possibility of extra money for the civil service to deal with the ongoing healthcare issues, Mr Smith maintained that the negotiations on health service issues would be led by the civil service.  His comments come as industrial action continues to affect the health service.  At the Ulster Hospital, routine afternoon outpatient appointments, with the exception of maternity and children's, have been cancelled.  Patients in the South Eastern Trust area who have not received a letter of cancellation should attend as normal for their appointments.  In the Western Trust area, strike action by support services staff is expected to affect hospitals, day centres and residential homes.  Full details and advice on current health care services can be found on the Health and Social Care Board website.  Dr Michael McBride, Northern Ireland's chief medical officer, has warned that there is a "real risk" of unintended consequences if industrial action continues.  Speaking on BBC NI's Nolan Show, Dr McBride said the situation was "very concerning" given the fragile nature of Northern Ireland's health system.  He said that the scale and scope of industrial action at a time of significant pressure on the service meant that "the risk of unintended consequences is real".  He said he feared what these consequences might be, but stressed he also respected workers' rights.  "Front-line health and social care staff have genuine grievances and I absolutely accept the rights of those individuals to take industrial action," he said.  "Who wouldn't want hard working staff, totally dedicated and committed staff who are the backbone of our health service to get a fair day's pay, to have pay which is comparable to other parts of the United Kingdom?"  Dr McBride repeated his appeal to all in the dispute to pause, take a step back and work to unlock the impasse.  Among those taking industrial action in Derry is Stephen Ward, a porter at Altnagelvin Hospital.  He said staff were "at breaking point".  "We are running around 24/7 after cardiac arrests and people with serious haemorrhages.  "There's so much to the role that keeps the place functioning and we are not getting rewarded for it," he said.  "We are basically on minimum wage and you can't live the best quality of life that you should.  "We are at breaking point and I think we should go into direct rule as soon as possible. It's emotional because we are always thinking about the patients."  Speaking on BBC NI's Good Morning Ulster, Anne Speed of Unison welcomed the decision by the health trusts' chief executives to speak out in a joint statement.  "I was glad to hear that they didn't blame workers," she said.  "They have pointed in the direction of those who have access to money and those who can influence those who have access to money. That direction needs to be continued and the chief executives need to continue calling for that."  Ms Speed said that, so far, those who can offer compromise do not have access to money.  She said the basis on which the Department of Health had looked for a resolution of the dispute was insufficient at this stage.  Ms Speed said Unison was not walking away from its responsibilities and was working to manage risk.  She said the planned complete withdrawal of labour by nurses on 18 December would be "very serious".  "When nurses remove themselves from routine nursing care it will be a very big wake-up call for everybody with anything to do with the health service, especially those in the leadership," she said.  On Tuesday, nurses from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) took action short of strike by refusing to do any work not directly related to patient care.  The UK government said that as health is a devolved matter, only a restored Stormont executive could take decisions on the health service.  In a statement, the Northern Ireland Office said that while Julian Smith had further discussions with the NI Civil Service on Tuesday, he "has no powers to direct them or take decisions on health matters".  Two more days of industrial action, short of strike action, are to be held on 10 and 11 December.  Members of the RCN and trade unions Unite, Unison and NIPSA have voted to strike on 18 December.


birminghammail--2019-01-21--The number of Birmingham kids accessing mental health services soars - heres where to get help

The number of Birmingham kids accessing mental health services soars - here's where to get help

The number of children and teenagers accessing mental health services in Birmingham is on the rise.  The latest figures from the NHS have revealed that a total of 57,140 people used mental health services in our city in 2017/18.  Of those, 9,615 were under the age of 18 - meaning one in every six people accessing these services last year was a child or teenager.  The figure is 17% higher than it was the year before.  In 2016/17, 8,250 children and teenagers accessed mental health services in Birmingham.  That was the first year that this figure was recorded.  Nationally, 525,326 children and teenagers accessed mental health services in 2017/18 - accounting for around one in every four people using these services.  It is not possible to compare this figure to the previous year, due to data quality issues for some NHS trusts in 2016/17.  The figures take into account people accessing secondary mental health services, learning disabilities and autism services.  It may be harder to spot signs of mental illness in children because they may not know how to express what is bothering them.  The NHS advises that signs of depression and anxiety in children often include irritability, having trouble sleeping, and interacting less with friends and family.  Place2Be, a children's mental health charity, advises concerned parents to try and talk to their child during a car journey or even when playing with them.  The charity also says that parents who are worried about their child's mental health should visit their GP.  Samaritans (116 123) samaritans.org operates a 24-hour service available every day of the year. If you prefer to write down how you’re feeling, or if you’re worried about being overheard on the phone, you can email Samaritans at jo@samaritans.org , write to Freepost RSRB-KKBY-CYJK, PO Box 9090, STIRLING, FK8 2SA and visit www.samaritans.org/branches to find your nearest branch.  CALM (0800 58 58 58) thecalmzone.net has a helpline is for men who are down or have hit a wall for any reason, who need to talk or find information and support. They're open 5pm to midnight, 365 days a year.  Childline (0800 1111 ) runs a helpline for children and young people in the UK. Calls are free and the number won’t show up on your phone bill.   PAPYRUS (0800 068 41 41) is a voluntary organisation supporting teenagers and young adults who are feeling suicidal.   Depression Alliance is a charity for people with depression. It doesn’t have a helpline, but offers a wide range of useful resources and links to other relevant information depressionalliance.org   Students Against Depression is a website for students who are depressed, have a low mood or are having suicidal thoughts. Bullying UK is a website for both children and adults affected by bullying studentsagainstdepression.org   The Sanctuary (0300 003 7029 ) helps people who are struggling to cope - experiencing depression, anxiety, panic attacks or in crisis. You can call them between 8pm and 6am every night.There are other depression charities.  There are other depression charities.


birminghammail--2019-06-28--Doctors overwhelmingly reject radical health services change in Sandwell

Doctors 'overwhelmingly' reject radical health services change in Sandwell

Plans to radically change health services in Sandwell and West Birmingham have been overwhelmingly rejected by GPs who feared it would have broken their link to local acute hospitals.  Local doctors voted down a proposal to change the present boundaries of the local clinical commissioning group (CCG) in favour of a unified Birmingham and Solihull body and a new Black Country group which would have included Wolverhampton , Dudley and Walsall .  Presently, Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG oversees and pays for primary care services in Oldbury, Rowley Regis, Smethwick, Tipton, Wednesbury, West Bromwich and parts of Birmingham.  The change had been supported by NHS England which wanted to see local surgeries outside of Sandwell transferred to Birmingham and Solihull CCG.  But the plans were criticised by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Hospitals Trust which warned the changes could impact on the much-delayed Midland Metropolitan Hospital.  GPs rejected the scheme by 71 per cent and voted to retain the present system.  Dr Gwyn Harris, a clinical lead  for nine practices  covering 96,000 patients, said doctors rejected the plan because it would bring unwanted reorganisation and break the close links with local acute hospitals.  Explaining why his colleagues had thrown out the plans, he said GP surgeries and hospitals worked closely together to address patients’ needs.  He added: “The main reason is we are very used to working as a single health economy across Sandwell and West Birmingham.  “From a health point of view it makes an enormous amount of sense to cluster around our acute trust which most of us use.”  He added: “If we split, certainly for those of us in West Birmingham it would have felt like going back to the start because we would have had to work with someone else's plans.  “We would have been a relatively small part of a much larger health economy that didn’t look towards our acute trust but actually looked towards a joined up Heartlands and University Hospital Birmingham.”  The vote has been endorsed by Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Hospitals Trust’s board  whose chairman, Richard Samuda, said: “We welcome the clear and decisive decision by local primary care leaders to retain the integrity of the Integrated Care model that we have been building for some years in the two places covered by the Sandwell and West Birmingham CCG.  “The CCG process has clearly given all stakeholders a chance to express their views and we now need to move forward on a shared basis.”  But the decision has also been criticised by other health leaders.  Paul Jennings, Chief Executive of NHS Birmingham and Solihull CCG and sustainability and transformation partnership system (STP) leader, said: “All member organisations of the Birmingham and Solihull STP were unanimous in their view that the Birmingham constituencies of Ladywood and Perry Barr should be coterminous with the local authority, CCG and STP.  “Therefore, it is disappointing that we remain in a situation where a large number of Birmingham patients remain outside of the natural and logical geographical boundary, and will be receiving inconsistent services to their 1.3 million neighbours in the rest of Birmingham and Solihull.”


birminghammail--2019-09-20--Student found hanged in university halls failed by mental health services heartbroken parents say

Student found hanged in university halls 'failed' by mental health services, heartbroken parents say

The parents of a student found hanged at her halls of residence have said she was "failed" by mental health services.  University of Liverpool student Ceara Thacker, 19, was found dead in her room in the Brownlow Hill accommodation on May 11 last year.  The five-day inquest at the Gerard Majella Courthouse in Liverpool heard her family was not informed she had taken an overdose three months before her death, or that she was struggling with her mental health.  Speaking outside the court on Friday, her father, Iain Thacker, 56, said: "For as long as I live I will never understand why no-one at the university picked up the phone to us in February 2018, and told us that our 19-year-old daughter was in hospital after taking an overdose.  "If we had known how Ceara was suffering we could have, and would have, made a difference."  He said his daughter, from Bradford, had found herself "falling through the cracks" with different mental health services, who failed to communicate with each other.  He added: "In my view it is absolutely essential that all universities have in place proper systems for identifying students at risk and communicating effectively with healthcare services and, where appropriate, with families, to ensure they are kept safe."  Her mother Lorraine Dalton-Thacker, 51, said: "At every turn, she was failed.  "I can't imagine how frightening that must have been for her. She should not have had to face this and it breaks our hearts that she did.  "We don't want any other family to go through this pain."  Recording a conclusion of suicide, area coroner Anita Bhardwaj said she would make a report for the prevention of future deaths to the NHS, recommending that the issue of parental involvement, with consent, was included in mental health assessments.  She said: "It's difficult and unclear whether Ceara would have had a different outcome had she had additional mental health appointments, been given an urgent appointment, and had family involvement."  Ms Bhardwaj said there was no record of discussions between medical professionals and Miss Thacker about contacting her family.  She said: "It would have been helpful to have those discussion, so if Ceara wanted additional support from her family that could have been facilitated.  The coroner described a delay of two months between Miss Thacker referring herself to the university's mental health advisers in February, and being given an appointment in April, as "unacceptable".  The court heard the delay was caused by "exceptional circumstances", including strike action, staff sickness and training days.  Mr Thacker said it was "disappointing" that the University of Liverpool had chosen not to adopt an "opt-in process", which is now used at Bristol University, where students fill in a form when registering to ask whether they would want their parents to be contacted in the event of mental health problems.  Gavin Brown, pro-vice-chancellor for education at the University of Liverpool, said: "We have conducted a thorough review of the support Ceara was offered and, as a result of this and our ongoing review of how these services work, we have instigated a number of improvements to mental health support services.  "This includes an additional £0.5 million investment in staffing and the introduction of rapid access appointments with an adviser.  "Following Ceara's death, we have also updated guidance to ensure that students who are experiencing substantial distress as a result of mental health difficulties are asked whether they would like to inform family members.  "We know that students' family circumstances can differ, and where students choose not to inform family we will explore reasons for this, and work with individuals to identify alternative support networks."


buzzfeed--2019-05-03--The Trump Administration Will Allow Health Workers To Refuse Abortion And Sex Reassignment Services

The Trump administration released a final rule Thursday that will allow health workers to refuse to perform or assist medical procedures — like abortion, assisted suicide, or sex reassignment surgery — if it violates their “conscience” or religion.    The rule, which will take effect in 60 days, applies to health care institutions receiving federal funding. It repeals an Obama-era discrimination protection rule that President Donald Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services said “proved inadequate.” The new rule specifically protects “providers, individuals, and other health care entities from having to provide, participate in, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for, services such as abortion, sterilization, or assisted suicide.”  The rule was first proposed in January 2018, along with the launch of HHS’s new Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, which was created by the Trump administration. The division was specifically created to monitor and respond to complaints related to the proposed rule, using those complaints and comments to help form the final version released Thursday. More than a year after its proposal, HHS issued the final 440-page rule Thursday: “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care.”  The rule is primarily concerned with enforcing existing civil rights protections to apply specifically to discrimination based on religious beliefs, Roger Severino, head of HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), said during a call with the media on Thursday.  “Currently, as with every other civil rights statute, we require that entities that receive grants from HHS will not discriminate on the basis [of race or gender],” Severino said. “To that we are adding religious belief and conscience … Saying you are going to comply is a contract with the government.”  If workers complain to the OCR about discrimination from their employer and that employer is found to have violated the rule, they could potentially lose their government funding, Severino said.  Severino said that under the Obama administration, HHS received only about one or two complaints from health professionals saying they were discriminated against for not performing or assisting with procedures that violated their moral or religious beliefs, but that in the past fiscal year, since the introduction of the OCR’s Conscience and Religious Freedom Division, HHS had received over 300 of these complaints.  “It shows it’s a real problem out there,” Severino said, adding that one of the top concerns expressed to the office from workers had to do with not wanting to refer for, assist with, or provide abortions. “Some doctors said they felt threatened from becoming an OBGYN, felt they would be forced to perform abortions.”  Abortion rights and LGBT rights activists argue that the new rule will only make it harder for people seeking abortions and sex reassignment procedures to obtain that care, particularly in underserved, rural areas, where anti-abortion state laws already make accessing abortion services difficult.  When asked what patients without many health care options were supposed to do if their hospital or health care provider refused to perform the procedures they were seeking, Severino repeatedly avoided the question, instead saying that the US had many health care options, and that “patients want doctors who match their values.”  Transgender patients could also be denied certain treatments on moral grounds — though the news rule does not refer to transgender people explicitly. Rather, the rule cites the 1973 Church Amendment, which, in addition to addressing abortions, also protects federal funding for recipients who object to sterilizations. HHS’s new rule argues the law allows a provider to deny any service that results in sterilization.  This allows providers to deny hormone therapy, hysterectomies, orchiectomies, and other transition-related services for transgender people, said Gillian Branstetter, a spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality.  In the final rule, HHS responded to comments raising those concerns, saying, “In the event the Department receives any such complaints, the Department will consider them on a case‐by‐case basis.”  “We’re confident this rule will make the lives of transgender people across this country harder,” Branstetter told BuzzFeed News, who cited the case of a transgender man in California who sued after he was denied a hysterectomy shortly before his surgery because a religiously affiliated hospital canceled the treatment. “Religious liberty is a bedrock principle for all Americans — including transgender people — but this regulation is a perversion of that principle.”  Socially conservative and anti-abortion organizations were quick to praise the administration for the release of the final rule. Major anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List said in a statement that the rule fulfilled “a key promise to pro-life voters,” and the conservative law firm Alliance Defending Freedom said that their clients have faced the very “discrimination” the rule seeks to do away with.  Meanwhile, HHS is expected to issue another, separate draft rule any day that also concerns abortion and transgender patients. According to statements HHS has made in court, the rule would seek to reverse part of a 2016 policy, also created under the Affordable Care Act, that says discrimination in medical care or insurance coverage due to gender identity or “termination of pregnancy” is illegal. That rule concerns how the government defines the term “sex,” rather than religious exemptions.  The announcement of the rule also comes a week after the Supreme Court announced they would examine whether it is illegal under federal law for employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.


chicagosuntimes--2019-01-16--Committee OKs creating task force to study citys mental health services

Committee OKs creating task force to study city’s mental health services

Plans to establish a task force to study the state of mental health services in Chicago unanimously passed a City Council committee Wednesday to cheers from onlooking activists and mental health advocates.  The proposed Public Mental Health Clinic Service Expansion Task Force, sponsored by Ald. Sophia King (4th), would “explore re-opening of mental health clinics and identify budgetary and operational recommendations for expansion of existing facilities.  “We are all aware of the anecdotal issues related to the gaps in mental health care that face our wards,” King said prior to Tuesday’s vote by the Committee on Health and Environmental Protection.  The task force would complete a comprehensive study to point out gaps in the city’s mental health coverage. Plans call for members to include city officials, experts and residents.  Nothing will be left off the table, King said, including digging into the possibility of increasing staffing at current facilities and re-opening shuttered clinics.  RELATED:   Top mayoral aide defends Emanuel’s decision to close six of 12 mental health clinics  Six city-run mental health clinics — half of those then open — were shut down in 2012. Since then, advocates said, funding for mental health care has continued to decline. A report last year by the Collaborative for Community Wellness showed the city’s Southwest Side, for example, was still struggling from a lack of adequate resources.  However, Dr. Julie Morita, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, told aldermen in October she believed the closures were the “right decision.”  In a letter read at Wednesday’s hearing, Morita advocated for re-evaluating the resolution. Though she wrote that she agrees with the goal of improving mental health services, she added that she wants the task force to provide data-driven direction — without politics.  “We must not be handicapped by forcing ill-conceived, political-driven recommendations on the task force before members are even selected,” Morita wrote. “The task force should not presuppose re-opening a handful of city clinics is the answer.”  King, who went back-and-forth with the department’s chief medical officer, Dr. Allison Arwady, about issues raised in the letter, said that wouldn’t be the only option examined.  Mental health advocates and activist groups including the Collaborative for Community Wellness and Southside Together Organizing for Power had gathered before Tuesday’s hearing in support of the task force resolution and reacted positively to its passage.  Diane Adams, a board member of the South Side group, recounted challenges with her own mental health in the late-1990s. Coming to Chicago, Adams said, she felt “despair” and struggled to want to stay alive.  But after connecting with a therapist, her life began to turn around, she said.  “Once I learned about my illness and my medication, I started to make goals,” Adams said. “So you can’t tell me what the power of mental health (care) can’t do. Look at me.”


conservativehome--2019-02-08--WATCH The biggest cash boost in the history of the National Health Service the latest Conservat

WATCH: “The biggest cash boost in the history of the National Health Service” – the latest Conservative broadcast


conservativehome--2019-02-26--Alan Mak To be fit for the future the health service must axe the fax and the pager

Alan Mak: To be fit for the future, the health service must “axe the fax” – and the pager

Alan Mak is the MP for Havant and is the Chairman of the APPG on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. His NHS Fax Machines and Pagers Bill is presented in Parliament today.  Conservatives have a long and proud record of supporting and investing in our NHS. As Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said when launching the new NHS Long Term Plan last month, the Health Service is “one of our proudest achievements” as a nation, and for over 40 of the NHS’ 70 years it has been under the care of Conservative Ministers.  Our Party has nurtured the NHS to serve generations of patients and the £20.5 billion a year delivered by the Long Term Plan is the biggest ever cash injection in its history. This means more investment in our hospitals, more doctors and nurses, and more resources to tackle major diseases. But extra funding alone won’t secure the NHS’s future. To boost productivity and improve patient care and safety, Conservatives must ensure that the NHS seizes the opportunities presented by new technologies too.  We have a duty to prepare the NHS for radical technological change, and in so doing, an electoral opportunity to strengthen our Party’s standing on the NHS by being the patients’ champion – harnessing technology to drive up clinical standards and improve patient care. That was the argument I made in my NHS technology report published last year by the Centre for Policy Studies and launched by the then Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt. By adopting the new technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in the Health Service we can put patients at the heart of a reformed digital-first NHS.  Rightly, the Long Term Plan shares this ambition and sets out the Government’s vision for a modern NHS that uses digital tools to improve patient care and safety. This means pushing forward with an unabashed desire to change the culture of a large public service organisation that has not always been the quickest to adapt to innovation. Decades of underinvestment in our digital health infrastructure has left the NHS at risk of being unable to take full advantage of the new waves of technological breakthroughs that are already revolutionising healthcare – and indeed other aspects of our society and economy. Fuelled by artificial intelligence, Big Data, wearable devices and personalised medicines, these 4IR innovations are set to turbocharge our fight against cancer, heart disease, dementia and other diseases and illnesses.  The Long Term Plan includes a welcome commitment for the NHS to become fully digital and paperless within the next decade. This digital-first NHS would see seamless interactions between GPs, hospitals, and community care; patients not having to wait for appointment confirmations in the post; and an end to health records being lost through human error. Embedding 4IR technologies into the NHS would also drive improvements in detection rates, pioneer new treatments and ultimately deliver better patient outcomes. Meanwhile, precision medicines, personalised for each patient and taking into account an individual’s genetic profile, can be at the forefront of treating disease in the years ahead, becoming a staple in the doctors’ toolbox. Put simply, the future of healthcare is exciting – and has the potential to catch-up with the smartphone era and patients’ digital expectations if we give the NHS the right tools.  But holding back the NHS from achieving these outcomes is a stubborn reliance, in some areas, on ageing technology such as pagers and fax machines. While the Long Term Plan clearly sets out a desire to “axe the fax”, there remain 8,000 of them in use across the NHS making the Health Service the largest consumer of fax machines worldwide. These archaic machines cause patients to miss appointments, hospitals to lose records, and cost NHS Trusts millions of pounds in paper storage each year, as well as being slow, unwieldy, and hard to maintain.  Meanwhile, the pager, which reached the height of its popularity in the mid-1990s, provides doctors and nurses with a limited amount of information, sometimes no more than a bleep, as they tackle a multitude of complex situations on hospital wards. This has led to 97 per cent of doctors admitting in a British Medical Journal survey that they use instant messaging services such as WhatsApp as an alternative, despite these being banned due to concerns over patient confidentiality. Of the one million pagers believed to be left in use worldwide, around ten per cent of them are used in our Health Service.  Yet there are cheap and easy-to-use alternatives available to NHS Trusts. As the Health Secretary has rightly pointed out, e-mail could be used as a way of communicating without the need for paper. And instead of relying on pagers, there are several specialist WhatsApp-style messaging systems available to the NHS. These include Medic Bleep, an app which when trialled at West Suffolk Hospital was found to save £4.5 million worth of staff time largely because doctors and nurses don’t have to wait by a landline phone to respond to pager bleeps. I visited the Hospital to see Medic Bleep in action first hand (see film above) and witnessed its obvious versatility when compared to old-fashioned pagers. If replicated across the 227 NHS Trusts in England new digital messenger systems that replace pagers could potentially save the Health Service more than £1 billion every year which can be redirected to frontline services.  The availability of modern replacements, and the need to rapidly upgrade the Health Service’s technology base, are the reasons I’m introducing new legislation in Parliament today that would ban fax machines and pagers in our NHS by 2021. My National Health Service (Prohibition of Fax Machines and Pagers) Bill can be a firm foundation on which to build a digital-first NHS that fully harnesses the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that is taking place in healthcare, consigning fax machines and pagers to the scrapheap of history.  Equally importantly, I hope the Bill also sends a clear message that we Conservatives are serious about renewing our NHS for the future, coupling serious financial investment with determined renewal of the tools that our doctors and nurses use and the care patients receive. By investing in the best technology – and phasing out the worst – we can ensure our NHS continues to serve us well for the next 70 years and beyond.


dailyheraldchicago--2019-09-10--Northwest Community Healthcare celebrates 60 years of service

Employees sang Happy Birthday to Northwest Community Healthcare, posed for group photos and enjoyed cake on the front lawn of the hospital campus in late August to mark 60 years of caring for the community.  NCH started with an 110-bed hospital building and has grown to an integrated system of care with 509 beds, a retail pharmacy, behavioral health center, Wellness Center, 23 doctor's offices, five immediate care centers, seven physical rehabilitation sites and 13 lab locations. It is proud to remain an independent, not-for-profit organization.  "Sixty years ago, NCH was conceived by visionary people who believed that the members of the surrounding communities should have a hospital that provided the same advanced level of care that was offered at hospitals in downtown Chicago," says President and CEO Stephen Scogna.  To celebrate, Scogna met and shook hands with hundreds of clinical and support staff as animal-assisted therapy dogs greeted employees. Employees received an NCH long-sleeved shirt as a thank you for their service to the organization.  Administrative Assistant Donna Laemont helped distribute the shirts to employees at the NCH Shared Services Center, where NCH's support staff works.  "All of us singing Happy Birthday and taking the group picture out in front of our building was so nice," Laemont says, adding that "giving out the shirts gave me a chance to see everyone and their reaction."  Laemont thanks NCH for the lifelong friends she's made during 11 years of supporting the NCH Foundation.  "I love how our hospital helps our community in so many different ways, and the people I work with are amazing."  On Sept. 21, NCH will mark its milestone at the NCH Foundation's 60th Anniversary Gala at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center. Learn more at nch.org/gala.


dailyheraldchicago--2019-11-19--Experts: Increasing mental health services is key to addressing school violence

There's no easy solution for preventing school shootings. But providing more mental health resources to schools and communities is key to addressing the problem, experts say.  "The reality is that the need keeps growing and we are always trying to catch up," said Janeth Barba, director of clinical services for Family Service Association of Greater Elgin.  Barba was among a panel of experts leading a discussion Tuesday about gun violence in schools at the Centre of Elgin.  She said her agency has seen a 16% yearly increase in the number of people needing mental health services over the last few years.  The event followed seven showings last week of Elgin Community College Theatre's play "Columbinus" at the ECC Arts Center. The production explored the events surrounding the April 20, 1999, school shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Two teens shot and killed 13 people, including 12 fellow students and a teacher, and wounded more than 20 others before killing themselves.  A cast of 15 students retold the story, weaving together actual words of Columbine parents, survivors and community leaders, and showing documented footage.  "We always pick shows that will have impact, raise questions, and make people change behaviors," said Susan Robinson, ECC theater instructor and program coordinator who directed it. "We are becoming somewhat immune to (school shootings), somewhat numb to it."  At the time, the Columbine massacre was considered the worst high school shooting in U.S. history. It prompted a national discourse on gun control and school safety that continues to be debated with each new school shooting.  Columbine was a watershed moment for police agencies forever changing the training and tactics used to handle active shooter events, said Elgin Police Cmdr. Rick Ciganek.  This also is the first year schools have been mandated to have "Run. Fight. Hide" drills to prepare for such events, he added.  Since 2000, there have been 789 incidents involving guns in schools nationwide -- the highest was 110 in 2018 followed by 78 in 2019, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security at the Naval Postgraduate School.  So far this year, there have been 45 school shootings -- nearly an average of one school shooting a week.  Speakers said more efficiently documenting and addressing bullying in schools, increasing cooperation among educators, law enforcement and social service agencies, and recognizing and reporting telltale signs of disturbed youth are key strategies for early intervention.  "If you see something, say something" is more than a slogan, says Sarah Seberger, Kane County assistant state's attorney.  She added that bullying follows students home through social media channels, and everyone needs to be vigilant about reporting it.  The prevalence of school shootings and required active shooter drills have desensitized students to some extent, says Mary Abbott, Elgin Area School District U-46's lead social worker.  "They don't cause as much anxiety anymore," she said.  Meanwhile, more students are coming to the district with adverse childhood experiences and trauma, which is why U-46 has invested heavily in social-emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching techniques, Abbott said.  U-46 social workers and some employees are trained to do comprehensive assessments of students who exhibit signs of harming others or themselves. "We are moving in the right direction to identify kids and provide them assistance earlier," she added.


dailymail--2019-12-10--Dr MAX PEMBERTON says Labour are WORSE at running the health service than the Tories

We are are told that if we love the NHS, if we really care about the health service and want to protect it, we must not vote Conservative.  It’s a message we can’t escape on social media, particularly after Boris Johnson’s cack-handed and belated apology to the family of a four-year-old boy with suspected pneumonia who had to sleep on the floor at Leeds General Infirmary.  Labour, goes the trope, is the moral guardian of our health service. Only they can be trusted with it.  To ram home the point, Labour- supporting doctors and nurses posted breathless videos online, pleading with people to vote for Corbyn. The alternative — the Tories in charge of the NHS — means it will be privatised wholesale or sold off cheap to President Trump.  It astonishes me that so many people fall for this rubbish. Of course leaving an ailing four-year-old lying on the floor awaiting treatment is unacceptable. But there is no justification for Labour to use the issue as moral blackmail — or any reason to suggest the NHS would be safe in the Party’s hands.  I have worked in the health service for nearly 25 years, dedicating my entire employed life to it, first as an occupational therapy assistant and nursing auxiliary, then as a doctor.  I feel passionately about the NHS. I am in mental health and have worked in some of the most deprived parts of the country. I come from a working-class, Left-wing family.  I am not Conservative. I am a typical swing voter. I take the franchise very seriously, keep an open mind at each election, read the manifestos and consider carefully what I think the country needs.  Over the course of my voting life, I have opted for pretty much every political party: Greens, Labour, Lib Dems, the NHS-campaigning National Health Action Party, the Socialist Workers Party and even something called the Socialist Labour Party, a short-lived outfit founded by the former miners’ leader Arthur Scargill.  This year I am voting Conservative — and doing so because of my love for the NHS, rather than despite it.  It is not just that so many of Labour’s claims are malicious and at odds with the truth.  If, for example, the Tories really were set on privatising the NHS in the way they suggest, why hasn’t it already happened? After all, they have been in charge for 44 years of its 71-year history.  It is also that Labour’s record on running it has been decidely worse than the Tories’. Just look at the NHS in Wales, where it has been in Labour hands since the formation of the Welsh Assembly in 1999.  Back in 2015, it was revealed in an official government report that the Welsh NHS lagged far behind its English counterpart in almost every measure. Astonishingly, the target for treating cancer cases referred by GPs in Wales at the time had not been met for seven years.  A litany of anecdotal stories has backed this up. Last year, health policy expert Professor Siobhan McClelland, who has worked in the NHS for 30 years, said she was leaving Wales after losing trust in its ability to treat her husband, who had prostate cancer.  ‘There is neither capacity nor, I’d suggest, sufficient capability in Welsh government to be making really good health policy,’ she said.  Former Labour MP Ann Clwyd described how her husband, Owen, died ‘like a battery hen’ after being kept on a trolley in a corridor at University Hospital of Wales, and has received hundreds of letters from people suffering as a result of poor treatment.  Many of the problems facing the NHS are, in fact, the legacy of Labour policies.  Take the grotesque debt caused by Private Finance Initiative schemes, which exploded under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s leadership.  An initial £13 billion of private sector-funded investment in new hospitals will end up costing the NHS in England £80 billion by the time all the PFI contracts come to an end, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.  To put it another way, some trusts have to spend a sixth of their entire budget on repaying debts due to PFI schemes. No wonder they struggle for resources and beds.  It is true, too, that more hospital beds have been cut under Labour than under the Conservatives.  According to figures from independent think-tank The King’s Fund, from 1997-98 to 2009-10 under Labour, 2,589 beds were lost per year. By contrast, between 2015-16 and 2018-19 under the Conservatives, the figure was 889 per year.  One of the more emotive elements of the NHS campaign this time has been hospital car parking charges, with Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn promising to abolish this ‘tax on the sick’ for millions.  But it was Labour’s introduction of foundation trusts — giving hospitals financial autonomy and exempting them from rules applying to state-owned services — that enabled the introduction of parking charges.  All this is not to say I’m uncritical of Tory health policies. Indeed, I have written dozens of articles criticising them over the years. In particular, the top-down reorganisation brought in by the Health and Social Care Act in 2012 has been chaotic and wasteful.  And there is no doubt the NHS is struggling. Almost everywhere you look there is evidence of underfunding and resources stretched gossamer-thin. This week a report from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine claimed the health service had recorded its worst ever performance in A&E.  Predictably, Labour blamed ‘Tory cuts’ but the reality is much more complex.  A 2017 report from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research actually found that NHS spending is at its highest level in history. The issue is that spending is not meeting demand.  The financial pressures on the health service are the result of a complicated mix of social  and political factors — increased immigration, an ageing population and advances in medicine — and they will not go away. Rather than throwing money into a bottomless pit, we need to have a serious public conversation about how we fund the health service and social care.  My worry is that Labour is so consumed by socialist dogma that it will never be bold enough to consider all the options, so we will be doomed to fall into more and more debt to pay for a system that will never keep up with the demands placed on it.  And given this ever-increasing demand, how can Labour justify its policy of a four-day week in an NHS that should be working flat-out seven days a week?  We are already desperately understaffed, so where will the extra doctors and nurses come from, let alone the money?  In fact, given Labour’s financial illiteracy, where will they find the money to run an NHS at all?  These are deeply serious questions and NHS staff know it.  While you might be forgiven for thinking every doctor and nurse is a diehard Labour supporter, it simply isn’t true. Many colleagues have quietly confided that they will vote Conservative, yet because of aggressive Labour supporters they dare not voice their intentions.  My absolute conviction is that, if you love the NHS, you should vote Tory tomorrow.


eveningstandard--2019-11-15--Boris Johnson on defensive as he admits 'we must do better with health service'

Boris Johnson has admitted “we have got to do better” on the NHS after the worst A&E figures on record.  The Prime Minister said the Government needs to do more after it was revealed just 83.6 per cent of patients arriving at A&E were treated or admitted within four hours, and more than 80,000 people needing a hospital bed were left stuck on trolleys, according NHS England figures.  On the BBC Breakfast programme, he was shown pictures of an 88-year-old woman who spent hours in an A&E corridor waiting for a bed.  He said he sympathised and added: “We have got to do better, I don’t deny that. That doesn’t mean that I am not incredibly proud of what the NHS is achieving.  "We have amazing staff and amazing doctors and, yes, we need to be investing more in them. That is exactly what we are doing.”  The woman’s son-in-law Peter Tuck told the Prime Minister there were “trolleys in the corridors, trolleys in the doorways”.  Labour yesterday accused Health Secretary Matt Hancock of being “staggeringly out of touch” after he claimed the NHS was performing “better than it ever has”, and Mr Johnson was asked by a caller on Radio 5 if he felt any shame or responsibility for the state of the NHS.  He said: “Of course I feel a massive sense of responsibility, I take responsibility for everything the Government does, that’s my job.”  He added that he was “acutely conscious” the NHS needs more funding. The Prime Minister said the last time he used NHS services was last year when he stood on glass at a barbecue.  He went to hospital in Hillingdon — where staff told him more investment was needed — and explained:“Foolishly I was making a barbecue and there was a bit of broken glass on the ground for some reason or another.  "I was jumping up and down — I think there was music playing — and a piece of glass went straight into the bottom of my foot and into my sole, my heel. It was absolute agony... Hillingdon were incredible.”  Asked if he had done enough to support victims of floods in northern England he said he had twice visited affected areas and support for affected homes and full council tax relief for flood-hit businesses was planned, although “you can never do enough for somebody who has suffered a disaster like flooding”.  The NHS figures, the last monthly health data before the election, show a continuing decline against key targets, as experts warn the health service is facing one of its “bleakest” ever winters.  Mr Johnson defended his method of making a cup of tea during his BBC interview, after a video showed him putting milk on top of a teabag and keeping the bag in. He said: “What’s wrong with that... it’s delicious.”


eveningstandard--2019-11-26--How VR is helping victims of Grenfell engage with mental health services

“On the morning of the fire, there were NHS staff on-site, responding,” says Ross O’Brien, former deputy director of the Grenfell Health and Wellbeing Service (GHWS).  “Over the period of the next three months, we developed a trauma service separate to other NHS services available; a distinct service for people affected by Grenfell. But what we found in the first couple of months directly after [the disaster] was, a huge amount of distrust in the community for agencies that were trying to support the initial relief effort, and the wellbeing effort afterwards.”  When a fire broke out on the fourth floor of a 24-storey tower block, ‘Grenfell’, in North Kensington on June 14 2017, few could have predicted the horror that would unfold. Seventy-two people lost their lives. And of the over 200 survivors, all were made homeless by the blaze.  In the months that followed, the NHS predicted over 11,000 people in the wider Grenfell area would have been affected by the disaster. More worrying still, the vast majority were not receiving medical support. Traditional routes to engagement with mental health services, such as GPs referrals, community centres and leaflets, were proving futile. A new approach was needed – and fast.  This was how Ross O’Brien – now, digital innovation director for Central North West London (CNWL) NHS Trust – came to work with Rosie Collins, founder of neuroscience and tech creative studio, The FRED Company. The pair teamed up to engage hard-to-reach members of the community and began by visiting key support groups, such as Grenfell United, the Rugby Portobello Trust, The Curve and The Harrow Club, and a number of churches. But they didn’t turn up empty-handed; a most unusual icebreaker arrived with them: virtual reality (VR) headsets.  “What we realised from those initial conversations was just how much of a powerful tool VR is,” Ross reveals. “By virtue of the fact that we were offering people the opportunity to use it, they were really open with us and really wanted to engage in quite difficult conversations.  “When we said we were from the NHS and why we were there – to offer support – people opened up extremely rapidly.”  He adds, “They wanted to talk to us about things they’d heard or about friends or loved ones who had been involved in some way. Sometimes we would find out that they had been directly involved or had lived in the tower.”  Alongside outreach workers, Ross and Rosie went out onto the streets of North Kensington, specifically to Portobello Road, in an attempt to reach the community there as well. Presenting passersby with the opportunity to ‘ride a roller-coaster’, ‘experience a wing-walk’ or ‘visit the International Space Station’ through the power of VR proved an intriguing invitation.  “We realised very quickly the impact of that immediate ‘wow’ factor with VR, which gets people engaged in the first place,” Rosie explains.  “And the fact that sharing that kind of exciting experience with somebody is quite bonding. This was really useful in helping relationships between practitioners and service-users, especially where there may be wariness around people linked to authority [and/or] government.”  She continues, “It [also did] something else, in terms of opening people up. People come out of VR, in any context, and they will tell you what they have seen and want to talk about the experience they’ve had. You find that that can go over into talking about the more difficult things.”  Ross adds, “When people started to talk to us, seeing us as normal human beings not scary clinicians or people from a government authority they weren’t sure whether they trusted or not, they started to talk to us about how they felt and what happened in terms of Grenfell. We started to use the opportunity to screen people – so we would ask whether they had been affected by Grenfell and whether they wanted to ask some questions which might enable us to help them with their wellbeing.”  This lead to referrals directly into the GHWS where, for instance, courses of therapy were offered.  “Some people would say, ‘Well, I’m ok, but my son has gone within himself – would you be able to talk to my son?’,” Ross says. “Or they’d say, ‘I’m worried about my neighbour’s behaviour recently, they’re telling me they’re not sleeping but they’re not talking to anybody,’.  “It’s just really opened up our ability to engage the community on a larger scale and bring them into the service.”  Rapid advancement in the technology has served to assist their progress. When they started out, a VR headset required a computer to operate. “It was actually quite unwieldy – lots of wires and stands, and the need for power points,” Rosie remembers. “It wasn’t very practical for doing the kind of work that we wanted to do.”  Now, however, it’s possible to carry two full-room scale virtual reality kits in the small confines of a rucksack.  The cost has also significantly improved. A PC-powered headset in 2017 was priced at between £500 and £600, but a powerful computer and peripherals like stands, cables, wires were also imperative – “all of which were expensive and made its use very impractical in lots of healthcare and workshop settings,” Rosie explains. It could have cost up to £2,000.  Today, a wireless room-scale VR setup can be purchased for just £400. “The cost is coming way down,” says Rosie. “Plus kits like the Oculus Quest are now really user-friendly. Anyone can learn to use it very quickly, much like using apps on your phone.  “It’s [also] totally wireless, which means we can pop-up in less than five minutes, pretty much anywhere, with amazing room-scale VR experiences.”  She adds, “I think we’re going to see more and more of it as people realise it’s actually very accessible.”  Ross and Rosie’s efforts, and those of the GHWS at large (which is part of the CNWL NHS Trust), have ensured that as of October 2019, 10,335 adults and children have been screened for bereavement, trauma and wellbeing requirements following the Grenfell tragedy.  “We’ve reached out to tens of thousands of people,” says Ross. “We have funding for the service for the next five years, and our intention is to be there for the long haul.”  It’s important that it is. While the first phase of the public inquiry into Grenfell was completed in October, the second phase is scheduled to start in January of next year. Set to address a number of issues relating to the disaster, on the agenda will be an investigation into the building’s design, composition and fire and safety measures.  “It’s going to scratch wounds,” says Ross, “And reopen a lot of feelings, and emotions, and traumatic thoughts for people.”  Other matters relating to the fire continue to cause concern. One of which is air quality; whether the fire has resulted in increased levels of pollution – of particulate matter and/or asbestos – in the area.  But perhaps the greatest problem still facing the neighbourhood is the issue of the tower site itself. The community are at the heart of determining its future. No decision has yet been made, but, with the support of the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission, they are to agree a suitable memorial.  It is not yet clear whether this will involve bringing the building down. But as Ross says, “if that’s what the community decides, the trauma of the building being slowly removed – that time is going to be so difficult”.  He remains adamant, however, that the CNWL NHS Trust will continue its work supplying mental health services to those affected.  “We will be there, offering therapy for children, adolescents and adults, trying to do what we’re doing now in terms of VR, and also engaging in different ways as well, so it’s not just one kind of approach.”  He adds, “There are multiple different ways to engage people and get them to understand what we’re offering – and that we’re there for them, essentially.”