Herbal medicines lack safety warnings

A study has shown that herbal medicines lack sufficient safety warnings.Researchers at the University of Leeds examined five commonly used herbal supplements to check if they supplied safety information required by new EU...
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Antibiotics awareness campaign launched

The Department of Health has launched an awareness campaign around the appropriate use of antibiotics. This is because if too many people use them inappropriately, they could become ineffective – because germs get used to... <Read more>>

Should Heroin be made available on the NHS?

Should heroin be made available on the NHS as a treatment for drug misuse? This was the question put forward by the Cambridgeshire branch of the Royal College of Nursing at National Congress. 

Local Nurse and Branch Secretary, Claire Topham-Brown, lead the debate which asked if an alternative approach should be considered for those drug addicts who are resistant to traditional...

Time to move to presumed consent for organ donation

The Organ Donor Taskforce is unrealistic if it thinks that it can dramatically increase donation rates without adopting a policy of presumed consent, according to a group of experts.

The authors, Sheila Bird from the MRC Biostatistics Unit in Cambridge and John Harris from the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation in Manchester, argue that “the taskforce did not consider all the relevant evidence, particularly on relatives’ refusal rates, and...

Drugs to treat cardiovascular disease are the most commonly dispensed drugs, according to The NHS Information Centre

Four of the top five most commonly prescribed drugs in England are used to treat cardiovascular disease, a new report from The NHS Information Centre has shown.

Simvastatin, aspirin, ramipril and bendroflumethiazide accounted for 12.9 per cent (109.3 million prescription items) of all items dispensed in primary care in 2009, but only 1.9 per cent (£160.3 million) of the total net...

£50M additional funding for cancer drugs

Cancer patients are to get greater access to cancer drugs recommended by their doctors as a result of a new £50 million fund announced by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.

Publishing a report by National Cancer Director Professor Sir Mike Richards on international variations in drug usage that shows the UK’s uptake of new drugs falls behind other European countries, the Health Secretary said that from October, an extra £50 million...

Forty per cent rise in cost and number of drug items prescribed to treat diabetes in England

Just over 35.5 million prescription items were dispensed to treat diabetes in 2009/10 at a net ingredient cost of nearly £650 million – a rise of more than 40 per cent over five years - a new report from The NHS Information Centre has shown.

The figures refer to prescribing in primary care in England and represent a 43 per cent increase in items and a 42 per cent increase in net ingredient cost compared...

NICE puts up fight over Avastin ruling

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is preparing itself for a fight over its ruling that a bowel cancer drug, Avastin, should be made available on the NHS.

It has based this judgement on evidence which alleges that Avastin on average only extends the life of patients by around six weeks – however this claim is being disputed by campaigners who say that the drug could extend life by a number of years. In response Sir Andrew Dillon, chief executive of NICE, has challenged those doubters to...