Charles Gore: Making the elimination of viral hepatitis a reality

Currently 400 million people worldwide are living with either hepatitis B or hepatitis C, with no country being left unaffected. For far too long we have allowed 1.4 million people to die every year. For far too long these deaths have been preventable. So for these reasons the World Hepatitis Alliance and the World Health Organization (WHO) […]

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The BMJ Today: Online medical records, confusing mortality figures, and deciding not to quit

• Patients promised online access to their medical records by 2018 Today, The BMJ carries the news that England’s health secretary Jeremy Hunt has pledged that all patients in England will be able to access and input into their own medical records from any location in the country by 2018.  As part of an ambitious […]

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Simon Nicholas Williams: Big Food could take the fizz out of Jamie Oliver’s soft drink tax

In his new documentary, Sugar Rush [airing tonight], Jamie Oliver pledges to “be a pain in the arse to the government” on the issue of soft drink taxes. Unfortunately for Oliver, and for the health of those he seeks to help, compared to the enormous political influence the food and beverage industry can and will […]

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Richard Smith: The NHS needs existential psychotherapists

Existential psychotherapists help people with the existential, eternal, unsettling, and human problems of meaninglessness, isolation, and the terror of death. These are problems that are causing much suffering in Britain and yet do not respond to the drugs that are the standby of the NHS. That’s why the NHS needs existential psychotherapists. It may have […]

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The BMJ Today: Prescribing predicaments

• Concern over inappropriate use of psychotropic drugs in people with intellectual disability The proportion of people with intellectual disability in the UK who have been treated with psychotropic drugs far exceeds the proportion with recorded mental illness, finds this study. Of the 9135 participants treated with antipsychotic drugs by the end of the study […]

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David Payne: Can higher education help protect against dementia?

In 2001 Tony Blair’s bid for a second term as UK prime minister included a pledge to make “education, education, education” top priority for the Labour party, with a follow up target to get 50% of  students entering higher education. Critics of Labour dismissed the figure as arbitrary and meaningless. But might the policy help protect some people from […]

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