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It has been discovered that more than one in four adult smokers now use pouch tobacco and roll-up cigarettes, with a considerably increase in the amount of female users.

An analyst approach of smoking habits in England suggests a cultural shift in the use of tobacco, now more favoured than conventional cigarettes. In 1990, just one in fifty female smokers used hand-rolled tobacco, compared with the one in five in 2007. The apparent increase is due to users believing the roll-up trend to be more fashionable than the conventional cigarette. Smoking related diseases have risen by 1.2mn to 1.4mn since 1997.

The new 12.7bn project to upgrade the NHS computers has believed to have had an effect on the computers and caused glitches on the system. This has resulted in a six-month wait for patients. The Department of Health has said that patients shouldn’t wait more than eighteen-weeks, unless they choose to.

The group which brought about this new technology, Barts and the London NHS Trust have a backlog of twenty-thousand patient records on its 18-week waiting list. Many of the twenty-thousand are suspected to be duplicates, but a good fourteen-thousand are believed to be genuine patient records.

Current charges for NHS patients and their visitors are to be axed, the government has announced. The NHS in England earns nearly 112 million from the car parking fees every year, which ministers have claimed helps pay for running costs  and the use of public transport.

Andy Burnham, the health secretary has claimed that if his party win the election, these charges will be cancelled for three years; however, he also claimed: “When people are coming in to hospital, the last thing they want to worry about is keeping the car parking ticket up-to-date,” Mr Burnham told the Labour Party Conference in Brighton today. “But, for families of the sickest patients, the costs can really rack up”.

Over the past week, 13,800 have died in Scotland, due to contracting swine flu. The most recent death due to the flu was yesterday when a sixty-two year old woman succumbed to the illness.

The old lady was believed to have underlying health problems. Staggeringly, these stats now indicate that there are almost as many people in Scotland with the flu when compared with England and Wales whom have a population almost ten times better. So far, swine flu ha claimed eighty-five deaths in the United Kingdom. Last week it has been discovered that seven-thousand people were found to have the illness.

A new therapy for new babies based on lowering the body temperature could significantly reduce the risk of brain damage at birth after oxygen starvation at birth. A complication can occur in around two out of a thousand babies where the umbilical cord becomes twisted and this can usually result in cerebral palsy and/or other neurological problems. Standard treatment for babies involves placing them in an incubator where they are helped to breathe by using a ventilator. However, today it is has been discovered that babies have better long term outcomes if they are cooled down by a few degrees.

A staggering eight out of ten children were receiving treatment in hospital for swine flu and were apparently healthy beforehand.

An analysis of impatient treatment in England also found that more than half of patients aged 16-44 didn’t have any previous underlying health conditions before being admitted. The amount of swine flu cases has risen in a third week in a row, and Sir Liam Donaldson, the government’s Chief Medical Officer had this to say about swine flu: “The continued increase in swine flu activity is consistent with the early stages of a second wave,”.

Natalie Morton, a fourteen year old girl given a cervical cancer jab was believed to have died due to the jab’s effect on her body. It has been discovered that apparently it was a tumour on her chest that ‘could have killed her at any moment’ compared to the jab’s effect. The fourteen year old collapsed suddenly moments after taking the vaccine as part of the National Immunisation Campaign. The joint director of the NHS Coventry told Coventry Magistrates’ Court:

“The pathologist has confirmed at the opening of the inquest into the death of Natalie Morton that she died from a large malignant tumour of unknown origin in the heart and lungs.

“There is no indication that the HPV vaccine, which she had received shortly before her death, was a contributing factor to the death, which could have arisen at any point.”

The number of diabetes cases in the United Kingdom has risen by 145,000 a year. A collection of data from GP’s show that there is now more than 2.6 million citizens diagnosed with diabetes, which is an increase of 145,499.

According to Diabetes UK, one in twenty citizens in the UK has diabetes, where’s one in ten has diabetes, a shocking amount. GP’s earn extra money for registering patients with diabetes, which might indicate some false readings in the data. About 90% of the citizens with diabetes has the type 2, which is gained from an unhealthy diet and obesity.

There have been recent fears over the safety of private doctors after hours. The recent fears have come about since a patient called David Gray, a seventy year old man was given an overdose (almost ten times) of a painkiller called diamorphine.

An investigation led by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has revealed the monitoring of independent care in England is a “nationwide problem”. The out of hours began in 2004 when the Department of Health let GP’s opt out of nightly and weekend work. This forced the Primary Care Trusts (PCT) to then hire private out of hour staff.

The H1N1 flu virus has apparently finally met its match with a new vaccination. Twenty five states across the US last week applied to have the vaccinations delivered.

The vaccination will first be delivered to Chicago, though it wont be available to the public for around two weeks. It is expected health care workers will get their vaccinations first as they deal hands on with patients who may have the H1N1 flu, as well as other diseases. The amount of vaccination doses sent out to the hospital is assumed to be around 16,000.