AI to predict how bowel cancer patients will respond to new NHS drug

A new AI-driven way of identifying how patients with advanced bowel cancer will respond to a drug that was recently introduced by the NHS has been announced.Researchers at London’s Institute of Cancer Research and the RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in Dublin have developed the method with the goal of sparing potentially thousands of patients from being given drugs that would be ineffective in fighting their cancers.In the UK alone, nearly 10,000 cases of advanced bowel cancer are identified every year, with young adults seeing a particular rise in diagnoses. Bowel cancer has the second highest mortality rate of any cancer, behind only lung cancer, and while survival rates can be as high as 98% when caught early, the five-year survival rate for advanced bowel cancer can be as low as 10%.The study tracked 117 European bowel cancer patients who had been treated with chemotherapy and bevacizumab, a drug that was approved by the NHS in December

Private firms providing services to NHS made £1.6bn profit in two years, research finds

Private firms providing services to the NHS including healthcare and consultancy have made £1.6bn in profits over the last two years, research reveals.The findings – on the basis of contracts worth £12bn – have prompted claims of “scandalous” profiteering, concern that the health service is being “taken for a ride” and calls for ministers to impose a cap on maximum profit levels.The £1.6bn in profits made in 2023-24 and 2024-25 would have been enough to pay for 9,178 doctors or 19,428 nurses during that time, according to the Centre for Health and the Public Interest

More than a fifth of UK’s ‘austerity children’ scarred by poverty, study says

More than a fifth of all “austerity generation” British children have been scarred by poverty for at least half their childhood, a direct legacy of the welfare benefit cuts imposed by Conservative governments in recent years, research reveals.The proportion of children born after 2013 who spent at least six of their first 11 years of life in hardship surged after ministers froze working age benefits levels and imposed policies such as the two-child limit, it found.Austerity policies, which drastically shrank annual welfare spending by tens of billions a year and took thousands of pounds a year out of low-income family budgets, effectively pitched hundreds of thousands more children into sustained poverty.The University of Oxford study said the austerity-era growth in children exposed to poverty for most of their formative years was a “significant social problem” that would cause long-term harms to their health, education and life chances.The study’s co-author, Selçuk Bedük, said the post-2013 austerity cuts to welfare increased both the numbers of children experiencing poverty and the time they spent in it

‘I just want to feel like me again’: the women still waiting for breast reconstruction years after lockdown

At the height of Covid, hundreds of cancer patients had mastectomies without the reconstruction that would normally accompany them. They would eventually get the surgery, they were told – but for many that promise feels more meaningless by the dayEvery time she lifts her arms to get dressed or hang out her washing, Julie Ford gets a painful reminder of one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. At 7am one day in April 2021, she had gone into hospital, alone and wearing a mask, to have her right breast and lymph nodes removed in a bid to stop breast cancer from spreading. Later that day, still groggy from the anaesthetic, in pain and with surgical drains hanging from both sides of her chest, she had staggered to the door with the help of two nurses. She was eased into a friend’s car and driven home to fend for herself

Iran war could plunge 32 million into poverty, says United Nations

More than 32 million people worldwide could be plunged into poverty by the economic fallout from the Iran war, with developing countries expected to be hit hardest.In a report issued amid doubts over a fragile ceasefire, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said the world was facing a “triple shock” involving energy, food and weaker economic growth.The agency tasked with tackling poverty said the conflict was reversing gains in international development, with the impact expected be felt unevenly across regions.Alexander De Croo, administrator of the UNDP and former prime minister of Belgium, said: “A conflict like this is development in reverse. Even if the war stops, and a ceasefire is obviously very very welcome

Thousands of unpaid carers to face DWP repayment demands during overhaul

Thousands of unpaid carers will continue to be hit with hefty and potentially unfair benefit repayment demands, it has emerged, as a government initiative gets under way to fix welfare injustices that have drawn comparison to the Post Office scandal.Ministers will on Monday launch an audit of more than 200,000 historical carer’s allowance benefit cases, with an estimated 25,000 carers issued with unlawful overpayments since 2015 likely to see their repayment debts cancelled or reduced as a result.The so-called reassessment exercise marks a big step in the government’s attempt to “put right” systemic injustices that led to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable carers having debts of up to £20,000 through no fault of their own.However, the government has admitted its existing “business as usual” overpayment recovery policies will be maintained while a full overhaul of the benefit is completed, in effect ensuring that carer’s allowance penalties will continue to be imposed.Furthermore, it is still unclear how ministers will compensate thousands more carers who were unlawfully issued with overpayment demands because of longstanding system faults linking universal credit and carer’s allowance, or who were wrongly told to repay money after officials lost evidence that they had reported changes in earnings