Tag: health

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NHS England and Wales start to adopt the attitudes of their ruling ‘New Nasty Party (Labour)’ but Lisa Summers will struggle to find them here

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Wales yesterday, the above and this astonishing news: NHS patients from Wales who need knee and hip operations in England face lengthy delays after a health board asked English hospitals to copy Wales’ longer waiting times. Powys health board announced the change as it could not afford the cost of how quickly operations over the border were being carried out, but patients have said they were not informed. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp89337gm7ro With NHS England and NHS Wales both now in the clutches of Starmerite thinking, you see how things will go for them both. Lisa Summers … Continue reading NHS England and Wales start to adopt the attitudes of their ruling ‘New Nasty Party (Labour)’ but Lisa Summers will struggle to find them here

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As demand for organ donation soars, donor consent is 11% higher in Scotland – imagine the media if that was the other way round?

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Professor John Robertson OBA From BBC Sussex and featured in BBC Breakfast broadcasts today, the above story, and: At the time, there were about 1,000 transplants a year and about 2,500 people on the waiting list. From 2024 to 2025, more than 4,500 transplants have been carried out a year and about 8,000 people are on the waiting list, according to NHS Blood and Transplant. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgv929rpl3o From Organ donation in England and the UK: Statistics and law changes (House of lords Library), published on 6 December 2023: Organ donation is a devolved matter in the UK. The main impact of … Continue reading As demand for organ donation soars, donor consent is 11% higher in Scotland – imagine the media if that was the other way round?

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‘A bottomless pit of hell’ – US researchers confirm the risk to Scots children of living downstream of sites like Sellafield, Europe’s ‘most toxic radioactive waste site’

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Professor John Robertson OBA From the Journal of the American Medical Association (Impact factor 50 – 7th highest of 500 peer-reviewed medical research journals) published 16 July 2025: Question  Is there an association between cancer incidence and living near Coldwater Creek [map above] as a child when it was actively being contaminated by radioactive byproducts from the Manhattan Project? Findings  In this cohort study of 4209 participants, living near Coldwater Creek as a child was associated with an increased risk of overall cancer during long-term follow-up, with evidence of a dose-response association. When comparing those living around the creek or its floodplain … Continue reading ‘A bottomless pit of hell’ – US researchers confirm the risk to Scots children of living downstream of sites like Sellafield, Europe’s ‘most toxic radioactive waste site’

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Scotland has only half the TB rate of England due to less poverty, more affordable housing and better healthcare access and could further improve with independence

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Professor John Robertson OBA I’ve used the Grok AI to assist in researching and presenting this paper. I’m able to check the references it helpfully offers. Last year the Scottish and English media widely reported a one-year surge in TB cases reported in Scotland from 2022 to 2023. Yesterday, Public Health Scotland published the latest data: To my knowledge, the media have not since reported the fall in the number of cases between 2023 and 2024. For context, all things being equal, we might expect England to have had around 2 700 cases in 2024. It had almost exactly twice … Continue reading Scotland has only half the TB rate of England due to less poverty, more affordable housing and better healthcare access and could further improve with independence

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Scotsman’s confusion on cancer scanning ignores major progress

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Professor John Robertson OBA The Scotsman‘s David Bol, today, has a frontpage masterclass in confusion. It seems to be about one NHS nurse claiming she’s had to go private for some unspecified cancer ‘check‘ and who is warning that ‘someone could die‘, presumably from delay in that ‘check‘. Before you can ask what the cancer in question is, so that we might look at the published figures, Bol charges straight into a piece about the apparent problem of cervical cancer screening uptake not hitting the 80% target. So, if there are delays in the cancer ‘check‘ this one nurse has … Continue reading Scotsman’s confusion on cancer scanning ignores major progress

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Drug-related hospital admissions fall steadily by a third for two years to ease pressure on wards due to Scottish Government’s world-first opioid overdose reversal programme, last and only time mentioned on BBC Scotland, by Reevel Alderson in 2016 before he was removed!

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Professor John Robertson OBA From Rapid Action Drug Alerts and Response (RADAR) quarterly ​report July 2025 published today, we can see a monthly fluctuating but steady, long term falling trend, in drug-related hospital admissions, from around 210 per month in July 2023 to around 140 in 2025, a 33% fall which must be easing pressure on wards. While there will be more than one factor explaining this trend, this seems key: What is the Naxolone Initiative? After a pilot phase ending in 2018, the Scottish Government began to embed Naloxone opioid overdose reversal kits across NHS Scotland. Shortly after, the … Continue reading Drug-related hospital admissions fall steadily by a third for two years to ease pressure on wards due to Scottish Government’s world-first opioid overdose reversal programme, last and only time mentioned on BBC Scotland, by Reevel Alderson in 2016 before he was removed!

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How much will the current doctor strikes and imminent nurse strikes further widen the already massive gap between Scotland’s NHS waiting list and that in England

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Professor John Robertson OBA In the Guardian yesterday, the above and: NHS bosses and the British Medical Association are accusing each other of endangering patients during the ongoing resident doctors’ strike. Their war of words centres on “derogations”, local agreements under which doctors who have joined the strike can cross picket lines to provide clinical care in a hospital. The escalation of the resident doctors’ pay dispute comes as it emerged that nurses in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have voted to reject their 3.6% pay award for this year. Scotland’s media are very quiet on this issue yet with the … Continue reading How much will the current doctor strikes and imminent nurse strikes further widen the already massive gap between Scotland’s NHS waiting list and that in England

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Donald – Scotland is not bad at all already and a damn sight safer too

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The homicide rate in Scotland? 0.8 per 100 000. The rate in the USA, 7.2 times higher! Professor John Robertson OBA Suffice to say, by contrast, sometimes stark, with England after decades of Tory/Labour rule, Wales after decades of Labour rule, Scotland has: With time, I could think of more. Ah, drug deaths! Falling but stalling, despite target beating treatment programmes, because of a recent surge of cheap, powerful, new drugs into towns and villages from English County Lines gangs. For those requiring a short cut to the evidence, try: What about the USA? Do I need to? Far higher … Continue reading Donald – Scotland is not bad at all already and a damn sight safer too

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As resident (junior) doctor strikes begin today in NHS England, SNP settlement praised by BMA means NHS Scotland set to avoid thousands of excess deaths again

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Professor John Robertson OBA After the last set of Junior Doctor strikes in 2023/2024, there were serious concerns about postponed appointments and excess deaths due to these. Above, the shocking picture of 52 out of the last 365 when doctors were on strike in England. There were no days lost to action in Scotland. According to the Guardian on 10 January 2025, junior doctor strikes caused around 1.3 million appointments to be cancelled. Had there been comparable action in Scotland, around 130 000 appointments would have been lost. According to the Telegraph on 2 January, there were nearly 53 000 … Continue reading As resident (junior) doctor strikes begin today in NHS England, SNP settlement praised by BMA means NHS Scotland set to avoid thousands of excess deaths again

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As resident (junior) doctor strikes loom in NHS England, SNP settlement praised by BMA means NHS Scotland set to avoid thousands of excess deaths again

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Professor John Robertson OBA In the Guardian today, the above and: In a letter to the NHS chief executive, Sir Jim Mackey, the BMA council chair, Dr Tom Dolphin, and the deputy council chair, Dr Emma Runswick, said: “Your decision to instruct hospitals to run non-urgent planned care stretches safe staffing far too thinly, and risks not only patient safety in urgent and emergency situations, but in planned care, too. “Consultants cannot safely provide elective care and cover for residents at the same time. We therefore strongly urge you to reconsider your instructions to hospitals, which should be preparing now … Continue reading As resident (junior) doctor strikes loom in NHS England, SNP settlement praised by BMA means NHS Scotland set to avoid thousands of excess deaths again