BMJ

Ministers have scrapped plans to abolish Healthwatch England and local Healthwatch groups, after pushback from health leaders and organisations. Launched in 2012, Healthwatch functions as a statutory independent voice for patients, helping the public hold the NHS accountable and push for patient centred improvements. Plans to abolish the Healthwatch network, consisting of 153 local groups and the national body Healthwatch England, were introduced as part of the Health Bill in May,1 amid wider governmental efforts to “simplify the patient safety landscape” of the NHS. It was proposed that the functions of the local Healthwatch organisations would be transferred to NHS integrated care boards, while the role of Healthwatch England would be transferred to the Department of Health …

Climate change should be declared a global health emergency, experts say after new data show that the health harms from global heating are accelerating more quickly than they were a decade ago. Annual average heat related deaths rose by nearly 36% worldwide in the 10 years after the Paris Agreement was introduced (2016-25), said the 10th report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.1 Led by University College London, and involving more than 300 researchers from more than 100 institutions worldwide, the annual report was set up to track the links between climate change and health. It is produced in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO). The study authors call on WHO to formally declare climate change as a global health emergency to enable a coordinated global response and for governments to put health at the centre of every climate decision. The call echoes those issued by other experts. Earlier this year the pan-European commission on …

Patients waiting for specialist care were dropped off the electronic referral service (e-RS) without warning, a national safety watchdog has warned. A Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) report earlier this month found that from February to July 2026 over 120 000 referrals, including advice and guidance requests and referrals for review, disappeared from the e-RS.1 The watchdog warned that these disappearances came to light only after GPs raised the alarm that patients had not heard from a provider about their referrals and otherwise might have been missed. The HSSIB’s report found no evidence of patients being harmed because of these referral disappearances. However, it acknowledged concerns that some patients could have avoided invasive treatment had they been seen earlier. The e-RS is a web based digital platform supplied by NHS England for referring patients to specialist providers. Responding to the HSSIB’s report, NHS England said that the e-RS was …

Rupsa Chakraborty has won an international writing award for her investigation into gender discrimination affecting organ donation in India, which was published in The BMJ . Chakraborty, a freelance investigative journalist and public health researcher at the London School of Economics, won an Eric and Wendy Schmidt award for excellence in science communications. The award is given by the US based National Academies of Sciences, …

The finding that some residents of Thornton-Cleveleys have high blood concentrations of perfluoro-octanoic acid (PFOA)1—one of the most common polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—is clearly a worry given the carcinogenic potential of these chemicals and their persistence in the environment for many years. Whether the small group of people who were tested is …

A doctor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has died from Ebola, said the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). Marie-France Shogogo was described as “a young doctor” working in Beni in the north east of the country. A major outbreak of Bundibugyo Ebola was first detected in nearby Ituri Province in May this year. Shogogo’s death was “a painful loss” that had caused “profound sadness,” Africa CDC said in a post on …

Initially having qualified in dentistry but changing to medicine, George decided to pursue a career as a maxillofacial surgeon. As no training posts were available, he changed to vascular surgery. He undertook basic surgical training at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. He was awarded a Hunterian professorship by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) and the prestigious Jacksonian prize for his research on blood transfusion and …

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Edward Peter Lawrence was born in 1930 in eastern India to parents working in the coalmining industry near Kolkata. After completing school in Darjeeling he came to England in 1948 to study at King’s College Cambridge, where he recounted fond memories of professors accidentally releasing birds in physiology lectures, fellow students dropping petri dishes of anthrax in pathology, and a group of friends night climbing to plant a cloth-and-straw model pig on the roof of a rival house. After clinical years at the Middlesex Hospital he did house officer jobs in Portsmouth and at Reading, where Judy, soon to …

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