Elisabeth Mahase

Over the past decade new health secretary Yvette Cooper has taken almost half a million pounds from a donor linked to healthcare recruitment, or from companies ultimately owned and controlled by him, The BMJ can reveal. The donor in question was businessman Peter Hearn, who for years held a significant stake in NHS and private healthcare recruitment firm Odgers. Odgers was involved in the appointment of former TalkTalk executive Dido Harding as the lead for the heavily criticised NHS Test and Trace programme during the covid-19 pandemic.1 2 A quick search by The BMJ found many other senior NHS jobs for which Odgers was listed as the “recruitment partner.”3 4 Despite doctors’ concern over Cooper’s acceptance of these donations, she has declined to rule out taking further donations from donors or companies with commercial ties to the NHS or those linked to private healthcare while in post as health secretary. Between 2015 and 2024 the MP, who previously served as foreign secretary and home secretary, took £248 619 from Hearn directly as well as £220 623 from two of his companies, MPM Connect5 and OPD Group (box 1).6 Neither of these companies have a public website but both are registered with Companies House at the address of an accountancy firm in Hertfordshire. In 2023 Sky …

A wellness brand sold in high street pharmacies in the UK has been criticised by doctors for its advertisements promoting a “GLP-1 patch” as “literally Ozempic” but “10 times healthier” on social media. The ad features a young woman who takes a patch off her upper arm with text stating “DO NOT GET Oz3mp!c” superimposed above her. She says: “It is time to take off my GLP-1 patch. I am on day 4. “I used to be addicted to semaglutide, which is basically just Ozempic. This little circle patch is the same thing, if not better.” She continued, “You guys, please don’t try, like, the Ozempic way. Just this sticker is literally it and more. I actually had to go to the hospital because of semaglutide, and this patch is 10 times healthier. “You’re not injecting yourself with anything. You just put the sticker somewhere on your body without body hair and the magic just happens.” Video 1 The Kind Patches advertisement The ad was promoted by—and links to—a “natural beauty and health patch company” brand called Kind Patches owned by a UK company, Kind Patches Ltd, …

Israel has refused to open criminal investigations into two attacks by its military that killed four Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff and injured six more, the medical charity said.1 MSF has strongly condemned the decision made by the Israeli military advocate general, who is responsible for enforcing the rule of law in Israel’s military, to close the cases. The first incident occurred in November 2023, when attacks carried out on an MSF convoy in Gaza City killed two people, and the second in February 2024 when an MSF shelter in Khan Younis was hit, killing two and injuring six. The incidents form part of a wider pattern of attacks on healthcare and aid workers in Gaza. Since October 2023 Israeli forces have killed 15 MSF staff members in Gaza. According to the United Nations, more than 560 humanitarian workers have been killed in Gaza and the West Bank in the past …

Nine years after 750 000 Rohingya refugees fled violence in Myanmar and sought sanctuary in Bangladesh, The BMJ visits Cox’s Bazar to see the reality of life in the world’s largest refugee camp and to meet the doctors struggling to provide care there It was 4 am on a late August morning when doctors on the night shift at Kutupalong Hospital started to see injured and exhausted people arrive. They had no warning of their arrival and no idea of what was to come—weeks of Rohingya refugees turning up in desperate need of care, traumatised by the violence in Myanmar and their treacherous journey in search of safety across the border in Bangladesh. When he arrived at the hospital a few hours later for his shift that morning, hospital doctor Nadim Shahariyar witnessed the horrors that were unfolding. He saw a woman holding her baby in one hand and a clear plastic bag with the placenta in the other. “The baby was absolutely pale. There was no sign of life. It appeared to have died a while ago,” he recalls. “The placenta was still attached to the baby. She hoped her baby was still alive. It is really a tragic thing for a mother to bear.” “There are so many stories like that,” Shahariyar says, describing patients arriving with missing limbs and others whose wounds had been in water for so long during their journey to safety that they had to undergo amputation. Nine years have passed since the mass exodus of Rohingya people began on 25 August 2017, but for Shahariyar, now the hospital’s deputy director, those memories remain vividly etched in his mind. Kutupalong Hospital was set up by Médecins Sans …

Almost a tenth of visits to emergency departments (EDs) during heatwaves in the US last year were heat related, research suggests. Two papers, published together in Nature Health , looked at the effect of extreme temperatures on EDs, and how at-home air conditioning may have averted more than 5000 heat deaths annually across the country.12 2025 was the US’s fourth hottest year on record, according to non-profit organisation Climate Central. The group warned that the nine warmest years ever recorded have all occurred since 2012.3 The links between climate change and health have been widely acknowledged, with an increase in extreme heat events linked to increased physiological dysfunction, …

Cases of giardiasis have reached a 10 year high in England. The BMJ looks at why this has happened and what doctors and patients need to know Giardia intestinalis is a protozoan parasite, often referred to as Giardia , that causes a gastrointestinal infection called giardiasis. “It was actually one of the first pathogens that was visualised down the microscope,” says Kevin Tyler, associate professor at Norwich Medical School. “[In 1681] one of the first things Antonie van Leeuwenhoek looked at and sketched was Giardia . So, we’ve known about it for a long time.” While it likes to live in the intestines of humans or animals, the parasite can form hard shells (cysts) that allow it to survive outside the body for months. The infection can spread through direct contact with infected people or animals or by swallowing contaminated food or water. It can also be transmitted sexually. “An awful lot of cases are contracted from water or food because the cysts are quite resilient and they can make it through some water purification, particularly if the purification isn’t terribly good,” says Tyler. UK cases include travel associated and domestically acquired infections. Travel to regions where Giardia is …

Patients have been left in limbo as all scheduled gender affirming surgeries in Wales have been paused and new referrals halted pending an investigation.1 The Welsh Gender Service announced that it has been instructed to pause its surgical pathway for adults by the NHS Wales Joint Commissioning Committee (NWJCC), while an independent clinical review is carried out. This review will look at the referral and assessment process, as well as why Wales has seen “significantly higher rates of referral” for surgery in the past year than England. While acknowledging that the announcement will be “upsetting, frustrating, or create uncertainty for some patients,” the statement did not provide any details on how long the review will take. Neither did it provide any further …

Better faith and cultural literacy in the NHS could improve health outcomes and staff wellbeing, according to a new report “To meet the needs of modern Britain, the NHS must understand the people it serves.” That’s the argument Emma Runswick, deputy chair of BMA council, puts forward in a new report looking at faith literacy in the NHS.1 A collaboration between Muslim think tank Equi and the British Islamic Medical Association (BIMA), the report brings together insights gained from 31 in depth interviews with healthcare practitioners and health inequalities experts, as well as the findings from a small survey of 54 Muslim healthcare staff carried out by BIMA. Among its key findings, the report highlights that all people surveyed thought that understanding a patient’s faith needs could improve health outcomes. But just two respondents said that they felt fully equipped with the training and knowledge to meet their patients’ faith related needs. Additionally, 74% of those surveyed said that they were occasionally or regularly discriminated against on account of their faith. And 60% believed that their faith was a barrier to their career progression. In July, The BMJ revealed that black and Asian doctors were …

HIV drug lenacapavir, a twice yearly injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), has been rejected by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). In draft guidance, NICE stated that the drug would not be cost effective at the current price proposed by the manufacturer. While NICE did not reveal what the price was, its analyses resulted in cost effectiveness estimates that exceeded its £35 000 per quality adjusted life year threshold.1 HIV and sexual health organisations have said that they are “deeply disappointed” by the situation and have urged NHS England and Gilead to urgently reopen cost negotiations. Last year Gilead announced the US list price for lenacapavir as $28 218 (£21 000; €24 000) per person per year. …

NHS England chair Penny Dash has been criticised after suggesting that winter planning for the months ahead will be “exactly the same” as previous years, despite concerns by doctors that such planning has been ineffective. Speaking at the King’s Fund on Tuesday 8 September, Dash, who took over as chair in April 2025, said, “We are about to have a paper come to the NHS England board on winter planning. “This will be my sixth year as an NHS chair, with exactly the same paper on winter planning coming to the board. We can’t just keep going in the same way.” Dash, previously chair of North West London Integrated Care Board (ICB), continued, “We know that we’ve got 40% of people turning up at A&E [hospital emergency departments] who don’t need to be in an A&E. We’ve got over 20% of emergency admissions who don’t need to be admitted to hospital. “We’re just in groundhog day, trying to make an existing system, which is a suboptimal system, work …