Leading UK health insurer, Axa PPP has said that it is changing its policy to include the drug, abiraterone under the policy for people suffering from late-stage prostate cancer.

The insurer changed it stance on the drug by and it now considers its eligible for the cover under the costs. The treatment under the drug costs about £3,000 a month per patient. Other insurance companies including Bupa and WPA already provides cover for treatment involving the drug.

A new research has claimed that a defect in a single gene was responsible for oesophageal cancer in people carrying the rare inherited condition called Tylosis.

The RHBDF2 gene made people at high risk of the disease, according to researchers at the Queen Mary, University of London. The gene could offer a new is of study for developing cures for treating the disease.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Primary Care and Public Health ha said that the Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) should have freedom to take their own decisions but must be accountable to the authorities.

The new report states that the NHS Commissioning Board is aiming for CCGs to use its systems and processes to facilitate effective public and patient involvement and influence. The report is based on evidence from 23 different bodies looking into the proposed changes to the NHS.

Heal experts have said that the number of people suffering from neurological illness, including Parkinson's disease and motor neurone disease (MND) are increasing in the UK.

According to a new report, the number of Parkinson's disease patients will rise by 28 per cent by 2020 while MND patients is expected to increase by 27 per cent over the period. The Neurological Alliance has said that the situation will be difficult for the NHS that is made even worse by the government as it does not have any plan to deal with the issue.

Charity Sands has urged for action to address the issue of high number of stillbirths and baby deaths in the UK.

The charity described the number of stillbirths in the UK as shocking and pointed out that about 1,200 could be avoided each year. The report read, "Stillbirth is where cot death was 30 years ago. There is still so much to be done."

Experts have been roped in to help address the issue of increasing violence in A&E units in hospitals. Experts from the field of designing have drawn up special clinic layouts to create a peaceful atmosphere.

The new measures will include TV screens displaying live updates on the number and types of cases being dealt with the staff at the time. The waiting rooms will also have displays showing the different stages of the treatment process.

The British Dietetic Association (BDA) has recently released its annual five worst celebrity diet list to the public.

The diets to avoid in 2012 include ‘The Baby Food diet’ that involves eating nothing but 14 jars of pureed or baby food every day. The BDA says that the diet has much less fibre and texture and eating baby food is socially isolating.

The list also includes ‘The Raw Food diet’ involving raw uncooked food and non-homogenised dairy products and ‘Blood Group diet’ that claims to have different nutrients classified based on the blood type of the person.

Circle Healthcare, which has been finalized as the first private firm to take over a NHS hospital, has said that is planning to significantly expand its NHS business besides establishing independent hospitals in the UK.

Circle Health has bagged a £1 billion contract to take over the running of Hinchingbrooke hospital in Cambridgeshire. The private firm has said that it is looking to acquire more NHS hospitals but admitted that patient care might be affected.

According to a new research, UK’s NHS is loosing as much as £3billion a year to fraudsters as millions of pounds are handed out to doctors and other medical staff working on fictitious shifts.

It was also found that the doctors are using funds meant for surgery to purchase iPods, digital cameras and computer games or pay their mortgage loans. According to the report by 2020Health, the NHS is not concerned as it is loosing so much money to fraud every year.

Lesley Griffiths, the health minister of Wales has said that health boards in the country should strictly follow their budgets in the coming years.

She said that overspending cannot be substantiated but outlined the importance of delivering quality services. She was speaking at the Welsh NHS Confederation conference at the Cardiff City Stadium in Cardiff.

The authorities in the United Kingdom have released a new updated flu pandemic plan to be prepared to take action on various levels.

The Department of Health released the plan that has been prepared with inputs from medical experts. The department wants to avoid panic during such an event and thus wants to be ready with its safeguard strategy. The authorities said that they would ban gatherings and would not allow commute of public transport from areas that have been affected.

Leading doctors in the UK have said that a set of reforms in the NHS risk making GPs overworked with new commissioning responsibilities and might allow them to spend less time caring for patients.

While giving their viewpoints at the RCGP's Annual Conference in Liverpool today, the leading members of RCGP informed Dame Barbara Hakin that the new NHS reforms will force GPs away from patient care. They pointed out that commissioners are finding it hard to complete assigned work as the workload is high, even as they have the support of PCTs.

The South London Healthcare Trust [SLHT] has been named in the list of most complained about units under the NHS system in the UK in a new report by the NHS Ombudsman.

The south London body was listed tenth in the list of most complained about health bodies in the country. The trust received 95 complaints in 2010-2011, recording a rise from 88 in 2009-2010.

Two of the complaints were resolved through interventions and four were accepted for investigation. Another five complaints were reported on and about every 4 in five complaints were upheld.

New Delhi, Sep 18 - Indian healthcare provider E HealthPoint has been named laureate of the Tech Awards 2011, a signature programme of the US-based Tech Museum, for applying technology to benefit humanity and spark global change.

E HealthPoints (EHPs), units owned and operated by Healthpoint Services India (HSI), provide rural families with clean drinking water, medicines, diagnostic tools and tele-medical services that bring doctors and evidence-based healthcare to their community.

Hospital staff shortage has again become the spotlight as one more hospital across the nation was added to the staff scarcity list. The whole issue came to limelight after the region’s renowned SMS hospital premises was crammed with the anger of a patient’s family.

As per the reported information the whole, controversy started from the moment, a middle aged man was found dead on his bed.

However, the hospital authorities were not making any official comments about the issue but the dead man family continuously blamed the authorities for killing their relative.

Laws are meant to be broken. A famous proverb followed by most of the people across the country has yet again proved its competence.

All these statements came to limelight after a journal reports revealed that irrespective of the ban, still about one third of the Indian retailers were freely selling the deadly “Diclofenac”.

Giving more details about the ban, the reported information accounted that long time back, the poisonous drug was found to be strongly connected for the striking predator population fall across the country premises and as a result of which the authorities declared a ban on the product sales.

The findings were publicized by the Oryx, a foremost worldwide scientific journal of conservation.

Is your child suffering from headache, neck stiffness, or having inflammation of the brain or fever and sometimes nausea? If yes, then take him to doctor, he might have become prey to Japanese Encephalitis (JE).

The demise of Yasmin Sheikh in the Municipal Lokmanya Tilak General Hospital, Sion, has raised questions on the kind of health facilities offered in civil hospitals.

However, health quality was not the only fear that has created panic among the local people, as the death case also revealed the fact that the hospital was surely facing a forefront shortage of trained doctors.

As per reported information, after departing for RFP, New Zealand Medicines Formulary has been entitled by its favorite business partners with a new brand name of Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, BPACnz and BPACinc.

Meanwhile, the reports also accounted that he Royal Pharmaceutical Society owns 50% of the possessions in the British National Formulary, and BPAC was an integrated society which has a combined business enterprise with Otago University and Southlink Health authorities.

It has been recently revealed that those people who have a secure future with good jobs, are young and healthy are going to have to pay more according to the federal health care reform. On the other hand, it was revealed that those people, who are old and prone to fall ill, shall have to pay less for their health insurance.