UK loses WHO status as measles-free after rise in deaths and fall in jab uptake

The UK has lost its status as a measles-free country after a rise in deaths from the disease and fall in the proportion of children having the MMR jab in recent years.The World Health Organization said it no longer classified Britain as having eliminated measles because the disease had become re-established.The UK is one of six countries in Europe and central Asia that the WHO says is no longer measles-free, the others being Spain, Austria, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.The WHO had adjudged the UK to have eliminated the disease between 2021 and 2023, but recent increases in the number of recorded cases – there were 3,681 in 2024 – and rises in the number of outbreaks and deaths has led to a rethink.There were 20 deaths from measles in the six years between 2019 and 2025, the same number as in the 19 years between 1999 and 2018

Children need to get their hands on a project, not a screen | Letters

Emine Saner’s article on screen time and toddlers identifies a key symptom, but doesn’t pay enough attention to the deeper diagnosis (How screen time affects toddlers: ‘We’re losing a big part of being human’, 22 January). The problem isn’t simply that children are watching screens. It’s that they’re not creating anything meaningful.For 11 years, Red Paper Plane has worked with more than 30,000 children in Bulgaria using a project-based learning programme we call Design Champions. As part of it, five- to 10-year-old children don’t consume content – they become park designers, car engineers and city architects

Life after Molly: Ian Russell on big tech, his daughter’s death – and why a social media ban won’t work

Molly Russell was just 14 when she took her own life in 2017, and an inquest later found negative online content was a significant factor. With many people now pushing for teenagers to be kept off tech platforms, her father explains why he backs a different approachIan Russell describes his life as being split into two parts: before and after 20 November 2017, the day his youngest daughter, Molly, took her own life as a result of depression and negative social media content. “Our life before Molly’s death was very ordinary. Unremarkable,” he says. He was a television producer and director, married with three daughters

NHS to increase accuracy of bowel cancer test in England

The main test for the UK’s second deadliest cancer is being made more accurate in England, in a move NHS bosses believe will save hundreds of lives.The sensitivity of the faecal immunochemical test (Fit), which detects bowel cancer by spotting blood in the patient’s stool, will be increased as part of an overhaul of cancer diagnosis and treatment.NHS England is lowering the threshold for the amount of blood detected through a Fit test needed to trigger the patient being sent for further investigation.It is now 120 micrograms of blood a gram of stool. But that will be reduced to 80 micrograms by 2028 and will bring England into line with the threshold already used in Scotland and Wales

Almost a quarter of UK GPs are seeing obese children aged four and under

Almost a quarter of GPs are seeing children aged four or under who are obese, according to a survey of UK family doctors.The “alarming” research also found that almost half (49%) of GPs have seen boys and girls up to the age of seven who have obesity, including a handful younger than a year old.However, four out of five family doctors find it difficult to talk to children or their parents about the condition, in case such conversations make them feel upset, angry or ashamed.Dr John Holden, the chief medical officer at the medical organisation MDDUS, which ran the survey, said: “These findings are an alarming confirmation of the growing crisis of childhood obesity across the country and the very real difficulties this creates in everyday GP consultations.”The survey asked 540 family doctors about their experience of managing obesity, the explosion in the use of weight loss drugs and what widespread levels of dangerous overweight means for the NHS

NHS staff must be protected from abuse | Letters

It is right to draw attention to the physical, verbal, racial and sexual violence and abuse experienced by ever increasing numbers of NHS staff in the course of their work (Editorial, 19 January). These threats to NHS staff safety are experienced both physically – in wards, departments and GP practices across the country – and virtually, as staff are filmed and photographed without their consent, and humiliated or abused on social media.The data on the sharp and continuing increase in violence and abuse rightly creates headlines. Beneath it are complex lives and rapid shifts in societal and behavioural norms. This complexity means that there is no neat solution to the growing problem of violence and abuse towards NHS staff