Category Archives: Health

Anne Milton, the public health minister, has said that people are not taking health risks from drinking alcohol seriously enough.

She hinted that plans to bring in some kind of pricing regulation for alcohol was still under consideration between the Treasury and the Department of Health. However, she appeared to rule out minimum pricing per unit as this may be seen as illegal under EU law.

Diane Abbot, the shadow health minister, said that minimum pricing had been introduced in Scotland and should also be introduced in England.

The government’s draft proposals on minimum pricing have previously been criticised as the set prices were thought to be too low to have any effect. The final proposals will be published within the next 2-3 months.
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British doctors are being alerted to a new type of breast enlargement surgery which uses stem cells from fat in the body in order to increase the size of the breast. They are concerned that the treatment may not be safe or mature enough to offer to paying patients.

Privately offering the procedures, known as ‘stem cell breast augmentations’, has been condemned by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. The surgery is currently being trialled in five NHS centres around the UK.

However, stem cell breast surgery is being offered by private doctors in the UK already, despite the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons advising caution. It is thought that two Harley Street clinics have already treated more than 200 women between them.…

An outbreak of a powerful strain of salmonella that began in Africa has been found in the UK, Denmark and France.

According to researchers, this new strain has developed a resistance to many of the strongest antibiotics that are normally used to treat the bug. The researchers are calling for closer global monitoring of this strain of salmonella.

There are millions of salmonella infections around the world each year. Most cases are not very serious and only occasionally can be life threatening. The S. Kentucky strain of salmonella has become resistant to Ciprofloxacin, which is often used treat many of the severe cases of the infection. The strain first came about in the 1990s, but by 2002 there was only a small handful of these…

When you apply for a new driving license, you will now be asked to state whether you want to be an organ donor. The new government scheme hopes to increase the numbers of organ donors in the UK. A similar scheme was tried in the state of Illinois in America and was shown to increase the number of people who registered as an organ donor.

In the UK, about one third of people are registered as organ donors. However, most research has suggested that approximately 90% of people would be agree to be an organ donor. Experts believe that new methods need to be introduced to encourage more people to register, leading to some debate over how to improve the rate of new donor registrations.…