Talk of swine flu seems to have died down considerably since the launch of the national flu pandemic service in England last week. Despite the lack of news generally, it’s no longer on the front page of every newspaper – perhaps due to the telling off that the media got at the weekend (see Monday’s […]
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Tom Nolan: Critical care and the pandemic panic
A pandemic of panic A “panic pandemic” is worsening the crisis in the UK said health ministers over the weekend. Andy Burnham, the health secretary, told The Observer of the need for people to keep a sense of perspective. “If people are made unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already […]
Sneeze and Click service launched in England
Last week 100,000 people are estimated to have had swine flu in the UK. 840 are in hospital and 63 are in intensive care according to Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson. The number of deaths has climbed to 26, while worldwide 700 are thought to have died. GP consultation rates rose dramatically last week. […]
Harry Brown on planned changes to Connecting for Health
Medicine and leading edge technologies have always gone hand in hand over the years, and with the recent explosion of information technologies, medical practice has certainly been at the forefront. Over the recent past in the United Kingdom, there has been a dramatic shift in the way medical records have been created and stored. There […]
Tom Nolan: Prescribing antivirals – is beyond 48 hours too late?
After Monday’s statement to the House of Commons from Andy Burnham (you can watch all ten hours of the commons session here), the RCGP emailed members to summarise this and other developments. […]
Tom Nolan: Confusion over flu advice in pregnancy
Government deliver new advice for pregnant women A storm erupted over the weekend about the government’s advice to pregnant women on swine flu. It all started with the National Childbirth Trust issuing advice that suggested that women consider delaying conception, as their director Belinda Phipps explains: […]
Joe Collier: In defence of being unsociable
Although many see me as sociable, and in some respects I know this is true, in reality it is only partly me. In many ways I am much more at home being unsociable, a trait which I believe generally deserves recognition (and respect) as a positive, rather than a negative, attribute. Indeed, I feel strongly […]
Swine flu forecast
Yesterday was a busy day for swine flu in the UK. First we learnt that 65,000 people could die from it in the UK if the government’s worst case scenario predictions come true. That’s three times more than the excess deaths during the 1999/2000 winter flu season and double the number in the two previous […]
Feeling the strain of swine
New cases of swine flu went up by 42% in England last week according to new figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners. Children are the most affected with 160 new cases of influenza like illness (ILI) per 100,000 population in children aged 5 to 14. The rate of increase in flu in the […]
Vaccines and virulence
Yesterday it was announced that Dr Michael Day, a GP from Bedfordshire, died from H1N1 influenza. A 6 year old girl has also died. Neither are believed to have had any serious underlying health problems The news of a GP’s death will surely send a shudder down the spine of many healthcare workers. Should this […]