Health & Wellbeing

As a new meningitis vaccination programme for infants continues, parents are being urged to know how to spot symptoms of the disease. The NHS MenB vaccination programme for infants was introduced last September, and will mean that by 2017 all children under the age of two in the UK will have been offered the vaccine. The vaccine is currently available for free to children born from 1 May 2015 onwards, with the first dose administered from two months of age.

TV funny-man James Corden, presenter Lorraine Kelly and comedian Jack Whitehall are just three of the unique breaths that make up a world-first charity music track and video released by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust as part of the launch of the charity’s new Life Unlimited Campaign.

Women are putting their health on hold because they’re too busy to take potentially life-threatening symptoms to the doctor, reveals new research released by charity Ovarian Cancer Action. More than a quarter of women (25.3%) say they prioritise work over going to see a doctor and more than a third (38%) say looking after their family takes precedence.

Canadians enduring long waiting periods for surgical and other advanced medical procedures now have a solution - in the sunny, warm Caribbean. Health City Cayman Islands, a world class hospital in the northwestern Caribbean, has opened an office in Canada to support Canadian medical practitioners who want to move their patients off long waiting lists for non-emergency procedures and improve their quality of life.

QEHB Charity has launched a £1 million appeal, with cancer charity Get-A-Head and the University of Birmingham, to fund a new programme giving cancer patients access to new drugs quicker than anywhere else in the country, through the reallocation of drugs originally created to treat other illnesses. Drug development through pharmaceutical companies using the conventional approaches can take up to 15 years before they reach patients, and have a 90% failure rate.

A new charity, which has been set up to help fund home adaptations for disabled children, has recently launched with the help of a £6,000 donation from ethical pet retailer, Pets Corner with a further pledge from the company to donate £5,000 per year. Sullivan’s Heroes is the result of months of work by Richard Smith – a long term supplier for Pets Corner - and his wife Fiona. 

A much-loved paediatric consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital has turned from a professional into a fundraising dad after his son was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. Barney Scholefield, who works in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the hospital, has more recently become a full-time bedside father to two-year-old Fergus after he was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer.

A pioneering partnership between West Midlands Ambulance Service and the University of Wolverhampton will see 30 life saving devices installed at locations across the West Midlands. The University of Wolverhampton has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Trust pledging its commitment to install defibrillators at its University campuses in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Telford and Burton as well as at partner Academy schools in the region.

Thousands of Birmingham carers are set for a wage boost after Birmingham City Council developed the new Birmingham Care Wage. The plan for private sector care workers on council contracts to be paid £7.50 an hour regardless of age instead of the Government’s new minimum wage (£7.20 an hour for those aged 25 and over, from 1 April) is outlined in the Business Plan and Budget 2016+.

Free, specialist advice and support about cancer is coming to West Midlands from Tuesday 23^rd February to Friday 26^th February. Macmillan Cancer Support’s mobile service will be visiting the area, with cancer information specialists on hand to answer questions and provide information. The team encourages anyone with worries or concerns relating to cancer to stop by, whether you’re living with or beyond cancer, or are a carer or loved one of someone who is.

Walsall College Beauty students received a lesson in the art of thai massage from an experienced beautician with over 14 years in the industry. Donna-Marie, owner of Fabulous Dahhlin Beauty in Walsall, visited the college to pass on her expert tips to Level 1, 2 and 3 students. She showed students how to give the increasingly popular thai massage, a deep tissue treatment which uses forearm and elbow techniques to apply pressure on certain points of the body.

Purchasing medicines online should soon be more secure after it was announced that containers will have to carry, as obligatory, a unique identifier and an anti-tampering device. Previous reports by Interpol have warned the majority of websites selling counterfeit medicines have Russian IP addresses and are re-routed through China to avoid detection — with the World Health Organisation recently putting a €70bn figure on the sector.

The women of Sparkhill and Sparkbrook are being urged not to miss their breast cancer screening appointments. The current rate of uptake in the neighbouring inner-city areas in Birmingham is just 50-60 percent – way below the national rate of 72 percent – and engaging women in the ethnically diverse communities is proving a challenge for the South Birmingham Breast Screening Service.

Health chiefs are inviting families to get ‘Sugar Smart’ when the Change4Life roadshow comes to Wolverhampton later this month. Its Sugar Smart campaign is touring the country, visiting 25 shopping centres nationwide. Families joining the roadshow at the Wulfrun Centre on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 February, 2016, will be able to see live demonstrations of the new Sugar Smart app and get free information packs and ask staff questions about sugar. 

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is urging local residents to support a new Fund to improve genetic testing for families at risk of the undiagnosed heart condition that killed Sir David Frost’s eldest son last year. The heart charity estimate that 11,000 people in the West Midlands are living with the faulty gene that can cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which led to Miles Frost’s sudden death at the age of just 31.

Ensuring there are enough clinical staff with the right skills to meet the demand for high-quality, safe healthcare is essential to the operation of the NHS. However, the current arrangements for managing the supply of clinical staff are fragmented and do not represent value for money, according to the National Audit Office. The arrangements for managing the supply of clinical staff involve the Department of Health, various arm’s-length bodies and healthcare commissioners and providers.