Ministers take over 'bankrupt’ hospitals

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9355452/Ministers-take-over-bankrupt-hospitals.html
One of Britain’s biggest hospital trusts is “on the brink of bankruptcy” and will be taken over by ministers in the coming weeks after being saddled with large debts from PFI deals, The Daily Telegraph can disclose

Queen Elizabeth hospital in Woolwich

By Robert Winnett, Political Editor, 10:00PM BST 25 Jun 2012     
        South London Healthcare Trust, which runs three hospitals in the capital, is losing more than £1 million a week and will be run by a troubleshooter and a new management team. It was formally warned last night that it would be the first NHS body to be taken over by Whitehall-appointed administrators under the “unsustainable providers’ regime”. More than 20 other hospitals in financial difficulty also face being taken over unless they take urgent steps to turn around their fortunes. A government source said: “This hospital trust was brought to the brink of bankruptcy by Labour. It is losing £1 million a week, money which could be spent on 1,200 extra nurses for local people. “The standard of care that patients receive at the hospital trust is not good enough, although there have been some improvements in recent months. It is crucial that those improvements are not put at risk by the challenge of finding the huge savings that the trust needs to make.
    “We don’t want a repeat of Stafford, where crude attempts to balance the books had tragic consequences. “This will clearly be a difficult and controversial process, but we are determined to turn this trust around so patients in south-east London get the care they deserve.” The trust runs three hospitals - Queen Mary’s in Sidcup, Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich and Bromley - serving more than a million people and employing more than 6,000 staff. However, it is thought to have been crippled by the costs of two Private Finance Initiatives used to rebuild two of its hospitals. The schemes, which totalled more than £1 billion, cost more than £60 million annually in interest payments alone. Draft financial plans submitted by the hospitals to the Department of Health show that it faces a shortfall in its accounts of between £30 million and £75 million annually over the next five years.

    A senior Whitehall official visited the hospital yesterday to deliver a letter from Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, warning bosses that the legal process to effectively take over the trust had begun.


A report from Sky News:

Lives put at risk by shortage of drugs, NHS leaders warn

Lives put at risk by shortage of drugs, NHS leaders warn

Patients’ lives are being put at risk by a nationwide shortage of critical medicines because pharmaceutical companies are rationing drugs, NHS leaders have warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9350508/Lives-put-at-risk-by-shortage-of-drugs-NHS-leaders-warn.html

     Four in five NHS trusts in England and Wales say patients are suffering “unacceptable” delays for drugs to treat life-threatening conditions including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, schizophrenia and organ failure. A survey of 60 NHS authorities found that the shortage was doing patients “serious harm”, with some having to be admitted to hospital for emergency treatment after they were unable to get their medicines. Pharmaceutical companies began rationing drugs to the NHS four years ago after British wholesalers and pharmacies started selling them abroad to take advantage of favourable exchange rates. But NHS leaders and politicians said that the restrictions had gone too far and urged ministers to intervene and force suppliers to put the interests of British patients first.
     Prof John Parkes, the chief executive of NHS Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire, said: “The current restriction in supply imposed by drug companies is harming the public and must be addressed urgently.” The scale of drug shortages for NHS patients was detailed in responses to Freedom of Information requests to 60 primary care trusts and health authorities by Huw Irranca-Davies, the Labour MP for Ogmore. He found that up to 70 common drugs were unavailable in some areas, with patients facing delays of up to six months for the medication. Earlier this year, a group of MPs on the all-party pharmacy group blamed shortages on pharmacists and wholesalers trying to make extra profits selling drugs to Europe, where they can get a better price than in Britain.
    Companies imposed rationing to stop this sale of drugs abroad, but NHS leaders and pharmacies say the regime has backfired and has made the shortages much worse. Andrew McCoig, the chief executive of the NHS pharmaceutical committee for Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth in south London, said shortages were “out of hand and nearing catastrophe” in his area. “The manufacturers must bear the majority of responsibility for the current crisis we’re all experiencing,” he said. “They will not explain their imposed quota system and they will not discuss the issue directly.” He said it was “untenable and ultimately disastrous” for patients. In Cornwall, patients had to be given specialist advice after pharmacies ran out of a drug for Parkinson’s, and in Devon a shortage of drugs to treat stroke patients led pharmacists to warn that “the consequences could be further hospital admissions or even fatalities”.
     In Hampshire, patients with schizophrenia were forced to switch drugs after their medicine was unavailable for six months, while the Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield group of NHS trusts handed over reports from pharmacists that “serious harm” had been caused to patients. Calderdale and Kirklees local pharmaceutical committee said: “Before the introduction of manufacturers’ quotas, the market for medicines worked effectively. No longer can patients be assured that if they walk into a pharmacy their medication will be available immediately or within an acceptable timescale.” In Essex, one health authority said the shortages had caused such significant deterioration in patients’ conditions that they had been admitted to hospital, increasing the burden on the NHS. NHS leaders said the problems were being exacerbated by the Coalition’s health reforms, which will mean more patients are treated by GPs rather than in hospitals. Dr Mike Prentice, the medical director of NHS South of Tyne and Wear, suggested this would increase pressure on pharmacies. Mr Irranca-Davies urged the Government to introduce a public service obligation for drug manufacturers to force them to prioritise British patients.
      “We are talking about drugs for life-threatening illnesses, like cancer, coronary care, and diabetes,” he said. “My message to the Government is they need to stop taking a back seat on this issue. If nothing is done, it will get much worse.” The Department of Health said it was considering an investigation to determine the scale of the problem. A spokesman said it was up to drug companies to make sure quotas were set fairly. He said the Government had an emergency reserve of essential medicines. “We will take any action necessary in the event of disruption to supply and distribution of medicines that causes serious risk to patients.” The pharmaceutical industry denied that quotas were to blame for shortages. Stephen Whitehead, the chief executive of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries, said quotas were a “legitimate means of ensuring that UK patients receive the medicines they need”.
       He said that without the quotas there would be an even greater shortage of drugs. “Quotas are a sticking plaster, not a cure, but in the current situation, figures relating to patient harm could be far worse without them,” he said. “If all the medicines manufacturers provided went to UK pharmacists, they would have in excess of what they need, but while these medicines continue to flow out of the UK these problems will persist, and make no mistake, patients will be affected.”

Detroit police search for 10-year-old carjacker

Detroit police search for 10-year-old carjacker

Instead of watching cartoons or playing ball, police say a boy believed to be 10 years old passes the time robbing and stealing.

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/video?clipId=7425373&topVideoCatNo=237936&autoStart=true

Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year

Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/Top-doctors-chilling-claim-The-NHS-kills-130-000-elderly-patients-year.html#ixzz1yMq16Ncq
Professor says doctors use 'death pathway' to euthenasia of the elderly
Treatment on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours
Around 29 per cent of patients that die in hospital are on controversial 'care pathway'
Pensioner admitted to hospital given treatment by doctor on weekend shift

By STEVE DOUGHTY
PUBLISHED: 00:08, 20 June 2012 | UPDATED: 15:14, 20 June 2012



Worrying claim: Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly        NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday. Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly. He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country. It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent. It can include withdrawal of treatment – including the provision of water and nourishment by tube – and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
     There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’. He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors. Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated. He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’. In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift.
      Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to place him on the LCP. ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he said. ‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said. Professor Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, was speaking to the Royal Society of Medicine in London. He said: ‘The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway. ‘Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.
     ‘Patients are frequently put on the pathway without a proper analysis of their condition. ‘Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible scientifically. This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other medical team members of perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in putting a patient on the LCP.’ He added: ‘If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated with 29 per cent of NHS deaths.’ The LCP was developed in the North West during the 1990s and recommended to hospitals by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2004.
     Medical criticisms of the Liverpool Care Pathway were voiced nearly three years ago. Experts including Peter Millard, emeritus professor of geriatrics at the University of London, and Dr Peter Hargreaves, palliative care consultant at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, Surrey, warned of ‘backdoor euthanasia’ and the risk that economic factors were being brought into the treatment of vulnerable patients. In the example of the 71-year-old, Professor Pullicino revealed he had given the patient another 14 months of life by demanding the man be removed from the LCP.
     Professor Pullicino said the patient was an Italian who spoke poor English, but was living with a ‘supportive wife and daughter’. He had a history of cerebral haemorrhage and subsequent seizures. Professor Pullicino said: ‘I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine via a syringe driver.’ He added: ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance.’ The patient’s extra 14 months of life came at considerable cost to the NHS and the taxpayer, Professor Pullicino indicated. He said he needed extensive support with wheelchair, ramps and nursing. After 14 months the patient was admitted to a different hospital with pneumonia and put on the LCP. The man died five hours later. A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians. ‘A patient’s condition is monitored at least every four hours and, if a patient improves, they are taken off the Liverpool Care Pathway and given whatever treatments best suit their new needs.

Harriett Crosby: A Useful Idiot

Taken from;

http://originalvelvetrevolution.com/2012/06/11/harriett-crosby-a-useful-idiot/

Harriett Crosby: A Useful Idiot

June 11, 2012 by Z

From time to time we will write about “Useful Idiots”.

The phrase Useful Idiot dates to the Cold War, when it was used to describe westerners who acted as Soviet propagandists, never understanding the true nature of the totalitarian genocide state they supported. The Idiot is Useful because he takes advantage of his rights to free speech and association to praise a system that utterly denies such rights to its own citizens. He is an Idiot because he believes he is Doing Good as he tells the world that Stalin is a Man of Peace.

Useful Idiocy didn’t end with the demise of the Soviet Union: Thomas Friedman is a most Useful Idiot indeed for the People’s Republic of China. Among the most prominent Useful Idiots back in the day were Walter Duranty of the New York Times, assuming Duranty wasn’t simply a Soviet agent, George Bernard Shaw, who encouraged naive Americans looking for work to emigrate to the Soviet Union, and industrialist Armand Hammer, who praised Felix Dzerzhinsky’s use of bullets as a negotiating tool in talks with striking Soviet railworkers.

This site was created, in part, to call attention to convicted terrorist bomber Brett Kimberlin’s misappropriation of the term “Velvet Revolution” (originally coined to describe the largely peaceful anti-Communist uprisings of 1989) to describe his “network of more than 100 progressive organizations reaching millions of people demanding progressive change through our various campaigns”.  Where the original Velvet Revolution was inspired by peaceful dissidents, Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution is run by a bomber, a perjurer, and a serial vexatious litigant.  Where the original Velvet Revolution was an uprising from below, Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution is funded by a very rich Useful Idiot.

Harriett Crosby, Useful Idiot

That Useful Idiot is Harriett Crosby.  Harriett Crosby is Brett Kimberlin’s aunt.  Harriett Crosby, through her tax-exempt Threshold Foundation, provided seed money of $60,000 to found Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution.  Crosby has been quite active in Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution through the years, trumpeting the Kimberlin Velvet Revolution’s allegations that the 2004 American Presidential election was “stolen” through electronic ballot manipulation, and claiming that Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution somehow “deterred” Karl Rove from stealing the 2008 election for John McCain.

As if.

Of course, that Harriett Crosby is an indulgent aunt, funding her wayward nephew’s misadventures in conspiracy theory and lawfare to keep him from setting off more bombs, does not make her a Useful Idiot.  No, Harriett Crosby is a Useful Idiot from way back, the founder and primary funder of something that called itself the Institute for Soviet American Relations, later the Institute for Social Action and Renewal in Eurasia.

Today all that’s left the Institute for Soviet American Relations is a website domain that can be bought for “any reasonable offer”.  Back in the dark days of 1983, however, when the Soviet Union was run by former KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, Crosby and her pals conceived of ISAR as a means to promote friendship and cultural exchange between America and the people who brought us the Soviet Afghan War, imprisonment in mental institutions for the disease of criticizing government, and house arrest for those too famousto be shipped to Siberia.

All this took place well before Gorbachev,  гласность, and  перестройка. The Soviet Union with which Crosby sought accommodation and understanding was the old Brezhnev regime, with a fresh corpse atop the edifice, and thousands of corpses beneath.

Harriett Crosby was, and remains,  a classic Useful Idiot.

Brett Kimberlin

taken in partial from

http://originalvelvetrevolution.com/2012/06/14/brett-kimberlin-and-the-justice-of-google/

Brett Kimberlin and the Justice of Google

June 14, 2012 by Z

On November 19, 1989, the people of Prague, in the former state of Czechoslovakia, gathered to commemorate a massacre of Czech students by Nazi Germany fifty years earlier. By the end of the day, the gathering turned into a demonstration against a ruling  Communist government that had begun massacring Czechs and Slovaks from virtually the moment the Nazis were booted out. By December 29, 1989, without a shot fired, the protesters had driven out their Communist masters, electing poet, playwright, and political prisoner Vaclav Havel as interim President. This peaceful revolt by a peaceful people against their Stalinist puppet government became known as the “Velvet Revolution”.

On November 30, 2004, convicted terrorist bomber, drug dealer, and perjurer Brett Kimberlin formed a Maryland corporation for the purpose of soliciting tax-exempt donations from the public and charitable foundations, to promote an alleged “network of more than 100 progressive organizations reaching millions of people demanding progressive change through our various campaigns”. Campaigns such as offering bounties for the head of the Chamber of Commerce, the impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice, and proof that John Kerry actually won the 2004 presidential election.

This corporation was also known as the Velvet Revolution, or “VelvetRevolution.US, Inc.” according to its corporate filings.

My name is Brett. My interests include botany, chemistry, and impersonating federal officers. I am studying to become a great lawyer. Won’t you donate to my charity?

Kimberlin, convicted of a 1978 series of bombings in Speedway, Indiana, is a product of a different time: the day of “radical chic”, of the celebrity terrorist, when murderers like Ilich Ramirez-Sanchez (“Carlos the Jackal”) were featured on the cover of Paris Match! Where today our government might reward a serial bomber like Kimberlin with a drone strike or a vacation in lovely Florence Colorado, Kimberlin served a scant 20 years in relative comfort, during which time he was able to collaborate on a biography with Mark Singer of The New Yorker. Singer would go on to describe Kimberlin as a “top-flight con man” when he realized that Kimberlin had lied about selling marijuana to the hapless Dan Quayle.

Please complete this sentence:  If Brett Kimberlin is a top-flight con man, that makes Garry Trudeau a top-flight …….. ?

As a child of the Disco Terrorist era, Brett Kimberlin seeks fame wherever he can get it. Most recently, Kimberlin has amplified his notoriety by filing a series of increasingly bizarre lawsuits and requests for injunction, such as the suit against blogger Seth Allen in whichKimberlin claimed Allen had damaged Kimberlin’s reputation as a terrorist bomber. Or consider the “peace order” that Kimberlin obtained against Aaron Worthing for writing that Kimberlin tried to frame Worthing for the crime of touching Kimberlin’s iPad. Each and every one of Kimberlin’s suits is an assault on free speech.

Not content to see its poster child, Brett Kimberlin, enjoying all of the fame, Kimberlin’s corporation Velvet Revolution, through its attorney Kevin Zeese, has gotten into the act by threatening to sue Ali Akbar of the National Blogger’s Club for inspiring “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day”. A claim that turned out to be utter fish-dung.

We believe it is a farce and a disgrace that Brett Kimberlin seeks to cloak his nefarious actsunder the name “Velvet Revolution”, a name which in the rest of the world stands for courage and dignity in the face of terror.

Brett Kimberlin stole the Velvet Revolution. We’re stealing it back.

If one searches for the Velvet Revolution on Google, the first result is a rather uninformative Wikipedia article. We have no quarrel with Wikipedia, or not much of one anyway.

The second result and most of its successors lead to Brett Kimberlin’s Velvet Revolution, a badly designed, garish website where Kimberlin seeks to separate you from your hard-earned money through sale of a bad dvd about peace love, and hippies, and to peddle his half-baked conspiracy theories.

This is unacceptable.

The second result of a Google search for “Velvet Revolution” leads to Brett Kimberlin. This is unacceptable.

Brett Kimberlin, and his associate Brad Friedman, do not own the name “Velvet Revolution”. They do not, and cannot, claim trademark or copyright protection in the term, because in the realm of politics, where Kimberlin and Friedman seek to meddle, the term “Velvet Revolution” is more generic than “Jell-O”.

Likewise, we do not own the name “Velvet Revolution”. No one owns the term. The Czechs and Slovaks who put their lives on the line in 1989 have a pretty strong moral claim, but they’re all in MittelEuropa. The Czechs and Slovaks have bigger problems than one terrorist moonbat making a mockery of a First Amendment that they don’t have anyway.

So we’re taking the name back, for them.

What are your demands?

Our needs are simple. We seek to drive Brett Kimberlin’s fake Velvet Revolution into third place, or lower, on a Google search for the term. We estimate that we can do this within six months. Eventually we’d like to knock Wikipedia out of the top spot, but all things in their time.

We seek to replace Brett Kimberlin’s fake Velvet Revolution with a fake Velvet Revolution of our own, a Velvet Revolution that tells the truth about Kimberlin and his henchmen, in order that past and potential donors to Kimberlin, such as George Soros, may be fully informed about who is cashing the checks.

Deadly Legionnaires' Outbreak Hits Scotland

http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16242075

        

        Victims of the outbreak have been taken to an Edinburgh hospital 

       Health authorities in Scotland are urgently trying to find the source of a Legionnaires' disease outbreak that has left one man dead and 15 other people critically ill in hospital. The health board of NHS Lothian said the patient who died at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh was in his 50s and had been suffering from underlying health problems. Another 13 men and two women aged between 33 and 74 remain in a critical condition in hospitals in the Lothian area. One man has been discharged after recovering. A further 10 men and five women are also being treated in hospital - but their illnesses have yet to be confirmed.The majority of the confirmed cases are linked geographically to the Dalry, Gorgie and Saughton areas in the southwest of the Scottish capital.
       Sky News Scotland correspondent James Matthews, reporting from the affected area in Edinburgh, said more than a dozen industrial cooling water towers at several sites are being examined to see if they are the source of the outbreak. "Samples have been taken from 16 separate towers at four different industrial sites. "They will be cultured, but that will take days to find out which cooling tower is to blame – if indeed a cooling tower is to blame."It has been confirmed that one site under health authority surveillance is a distillery, part-owned by drinks giant Diageo. CEO Paul Walsh told Sky News: "This is a very, very tragic situation… we will co-operate in every and any manner in which we can. "There are a number of sites being inspected, protocols are being reviewed, tests are being made, and that has been ongoing for a number of days."
      Nicola Sturgeon, the Health Secretary in Scotland, is set to chair a meeting of the Scottish government's resilience committee - and she will be updated on the situation and on efforts to identify the source at 3pm.
Dr Duncan McCormick, consultant in public health medicine and chairman of the incident management team at NHS Lothian, said: "I would like to express my sincere condolences to the family of the patient that died. Dr McCormick urged people to contact medical staff if they became unwell. "There is no need to stay indoors. The main thing is to be aware of the risk to yourself, based on your other underlying conditions, and if you become unwell to contact the GP or NHS 24. "Overall, I can assure people that you can go out of doors and, for the vast majority of the population, the risk is very low."
    The health board has said Legionella bacteria is commonly found in sources of water, such as rivers and lakes - but it can end up in artificial water supply systems, including air conditioning systems, water services and cooling towers. The investigation by officials is being led by the City of Edinburgh Council's Environmental Health Department and the Health and Safety Executive.Those responsible for maintenance at the cooling towers have been advised to carry out additional chemical treatment to the water in the cooling systems as a precautionary measur. The health board said other possible sources were not being ruled out. The first case was identified on May 28 but came days after the disease was active. Matthews said: "They reckon the outbreak goes back to May 14, two weeks before the first case was presented to health officials."
     Dr McCormick added: "I would like to reassure the public that household water supplies are safe and that Legionnaires' disease cannot be contracted by drinking water. But he warned: "Older people, particularly men, heavy smokers and those with other health conditions, are at greater risk of contracting the disease. I would urge anyone who develops symptoms of Legionnaires' disease to contact NHS 24 or their GP."

YOUR COMMENTS 

Posted by: OOBUC5 from yeovil gb on June 6, 2012 9:52 AM
     I caught this condition when i was working for a very large air condition company ,i caught mine working at an N.H.S hospital in the 80s ,they said it was not contaigous but i was put in isolation and they all wore masks .if you die the doctors pass you off with pneumonia , hospitals and companies are saving money by not servicing or checking the units, i was told not to change all of the filters in the unit ,with the recession and warm weather coming there will more cases,having had the condition and heard the doctors on sky news i was shocked to see the doctor left out photophobia when they were asked to list the symptoms. As for the search for the cause they only ever give a rough area because it may be a government building and they will get sued so you end up with a vaugue statement from the D.O.E ,THEN IT FADES AWAY

Posted by: OOBUC5 from yeovil gb on June 6, 2012 10:10 AM
     Missing information from the above list is you catch it from AIR CONDITION UNITS LIKE IN HOSPITALS ,and the missing piece in the doctors description of symptoms was PHOTOPHOBIA ,HE ALSO SAID MILD HEADACHE i had this condition i know what it was like ,he also left out when you are laying down and go to get up you are prone to black out ,its like being hit with a sledge hammer . most doctors brush it off as flue and im not suprised if they dont know the symptoms ! they also tell you its not contagious but you get put into isolation and they all wear masks ,its air born ,you breath it in so what it dont get out when you exhale ?
Posted by: OOBUC5 from yeovil gb on June 6, 2012 10:13 AM
      First place to check is the hospitals ,believe me i worked in air con and they dont like paying for aircon checks ,ask your hospital when was the last time it was checked and can you see the paperwork ,good luck with that one .

Posted by: Billy17 on June 6, 2012 12:49 PM
      I worked in building services on HVAC plant for years, and I concur with those of the same experience. Cutbacks have led to HVAC plant not being serviced properly, and I don't mean filter changes, I mean disinfection of drip trays and cooler matrix coils has to be done. If Legionella bacteria is present in the above and chances are it will be, it is then introduced as an aerosol in the airstream of hospital HVAC/ventilation plant where room air changes can be anything up to 20 changes an hour, infecting those within that are SUSCEPTIBLE to respiratory infection, normally senior citizens. It's part of HSWA legislation and often overlooked.

NHS Doctors announce strike action over pensions

NHS Doctors announce strike action over pensions

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9300242/Doctors-announce-strike-action-over-pensions.html
      Dr Hamish Meldrum, the Chair of the BMA, says doctors will strike over changes to their pensions on June 21. It will be the first time in 37 years that doctors have taken industrial action. Ballot papers were sent to 104,000 doctors across the UK and there was a 50 per cent turnout. The results show that 63 per cent of GPs voted yes, 73 per cent of consultants, 81 per cent of juniors, 76 per cent of staff and associate specialist doctors, 34 per cent of occupational health doctors and 60 per cent of public health specialists.