Scientists develop AI tool to spot heart failure risk five years before it strikes

Oxford scientists have developed a simple AI tool that can predict the risk of heart failure five years before it develops.More than 60 million people worldwide have the condition in which the heart cannot pump blood around the body as well as it should. Spotting cases before they develop into heart failure would be a big step forward, experts say. Doctors could prepare better for and manage the condition at an earlier stage or even prevent it entirely.The AI tool, developed by a team at the University of Oxford, looks for signs in fat around the heart that indicate whether it is inflamed and unhealthy

Doctors’ strike timed to cause havoc over Easter break, says NHS England chief

The latest strike by resident doctors in England has been “deliberately timed to cause havoc” by coinciding with hospital staff’s Easter holidays, the head of the NHS has claimed.Hospitals have struggled to find enough doctors to replace those who have refused to work during the six-day walkout, Sir Jim Mackey, the chief executive of NHS England, said.Many thousands of resident doctors belonging to the British Medical Association were on strike on Wednesday, the second day of a six-day walkout – that is the longest yet in their long-running dispute with the government over pay and jobs. It is the union’s 15th strike since March 2023.In a letter to NHS bosses on Monday night, Mackey said that the doctors’ stoppage risked setting back the health service’s recent progress at improving waiting times for care and the public’s satisfaction with it

Landlords evicting tenants before law to prevent practice comes into force in England

Increasing numbers of landlords are evicting tenants at the last minute before the law changes to outlaw the practice in next month, charities have said.The renters’ union Acorn told the Guardian that no-fault evictions made up one in five of the reports they received from members in October, rising to nearly one in three by January.The Renters’ Rights Act, which was in development last year and will come into effect on 1 May 2026, will abolish section 21 of the existing Housing Act, which allows landlord to evict without providing a justification to the court.“This isn’t a coincidence. Landlords are clearly rushing to force through last-minute evictions before the ban comes into force

World held hostage by reliance on fossil fuels, Christiana Figueres warns – and climate health impacts are ‘mother of all injustices’

Countries are being “held hostage” by their reliance on fossil fuels, a former UN climate chief has warned, describing the health impacts of climate change as “the mother of all injustices”.Christiana Figueres, an international climate negotiator who helped deliver the Paris agreement signed in 2016, made the comments as she was announced on Wednesday as co-chair of a Lancet Commission examining how sea-level rise is reshaping health, wellbeing and inequality.Lancet Commissions are international collaborations that analyse major global health issues and influence policy. This commission will examine legal frameworks to hold countries accountable for the health harms of sea-level rise. It will report by September 2027

What are the health impacts of sea-level rise, and who should pay?

In November in Solomon Islands, the former Tongan health minister Dr Saia Ma’u Piukala stood outside the main hospital in Honiara and “watched seawater lapping at its outer walls”.“The facility is now under threat, with plans under way to relocate it to higher ground – a massive and costly undertaking,” Saia, a surgeon and now the World Health Organization’s regional director for the western Pacific, tells the Guardian.“It should never have come to this.”The impact on patients and health services is just one part of a growing health burden driven by sea-level rise, including water contamination, infectious disease, food insecurity, displacement and worsening mental health.In 2024, at the inaugural UN general assembly meeting on sea-level rise, representatives of small island developing states and low-lying countries described the issue as a global crisis threatening 1 billion people worldwide, urging governments globally to act to protect their health and lives

Judith Rapoport obituary

The child psychiatrist Judith Rapoport, who has died aged 92, is credited with bringing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) to public awareness. Her book The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing (1989), which was translated into more than 20 languages and written in jargon-free style for a non-medical readership, was based on her groundbreaking research into the condition.People with OCD can feel their lives are upended by the feeling that they must constantly retie shoelaces, check light switches are turned off or doors are locked. Others describe the “torture” of having to perform rituals before leaving home or having to constantly wash their hands.Until the book was published, most people with OCD were unaware that others suffered similarly, and many were so embarrassed by their behaviour that they hid it from family and friends