Palliative care and choice must be at the heart of the assisted dying debate | Letters

Rachel Clarke is right to highlight the pressures on palliative care, but wrong to suggest that assisted dying debates have sidelined these concerns (As a palliative care specialist, I’ve witnessed the human tragedy of our end-of-life care crisis, 10 November). In fact, the opposite is true. The CEO of Hospice UK, Toby Porter, has stated that the government’s £100m investment in hospices, announced last December, would probably not have materialised without the terminally ill adults bill. He recently told a special Lords select committee that the bill has sparked more conversation about end-of-life care than at any point in his long career.The health minister, Stephen Kinnock, similarly acknowledged that the bill has been a catalyst for long-overdue improvements in palliative care, rolling the pitch for another announcement in the coming weeks

Sectioned children face more trauma in the institutions supposed to protect them | Letter

I read with deep sadness the article by Kate Szymankiewicz about the death of her 14-year-old daughter Ruth (‘The ward felt like a prison. What had I let them do?’: how my daughter was crushed by a health service meant to help her, 8 November).As a parent of a child who has also suffered with an eating disorder, I recall the same feelings of horror at the loss of control while we saw our daughter sectioned three times under the Mental Health Act.Our daughter ended up in locked institutions for 15 months, where self-harm, suicide attempts and attempts at absconding were the norm.She was the same age as Ruth when sectioned, far away from home, and without access to therapeutic support because she was deemed too ill

Maureen McGinley obituary

My sister Maureen McGinley, who has died aged 77, was a member of the Order of Columban Sisters, a progressive Irish Catholic order whose nuns train as doctors, nurses and teachers before going abroad.While serving in Hong Kong, Maureen made a significant and pioneering contribution to the care of people who are HIV positive. In 1994 she founded the Society for Aids Care (SAC), the first non-governmental organisation of its kind in Asia. It continues its charitable work to this day. Maureen devoted her life to the welfare of the people of Hong Kong from 1976 until 1999

UK hospitals bracing for once-in-a-decade flu surge this winter

Hospitals are bracing for a once-in-a-decade flu season, with a mutated version of the virus that is spreading widely in younger people expected to drive a wave of admissions when it reaches the elderly.The threat has prompted NHS managers to redouble efforts to vaccinate staff and communities, expand same-day emergency care and treat more patients in the community to reduce the need for hospital stays.As resident doctors in England continue a five-day strike over pay, hospitals are turning to contingency plans to bring in consultants and other staff for extra shifts and reschedule appointments where necessary.“Last flu season was particularly nasty and we’re very concerned that this year could be even worse,” said Elaine Clancy, the group chief nursing officer for St George’s, Epsom and St Helier university hospitals. “We’re preparing for a spike of flu on to our wards

New AI tool could cut wasted efforts to transplant organs by 60%

Doctors have developed an AI tool that could reduce wasted efforts to transplant organs by 60%.Thousands of patients worldwide are waiting for a potentially life-saving donor, and more candidates are stuck on waiting lists than there are available organs.Recently, in cases where people need a liver transplant, access has been expanded by using donors who die after cardiac arrest. However, in about half of these donations after circulatory death (DCD) cases, the transplant ends up being cancelled.That is because the time between the removal of life support and death must not exceed 45 minutes

Peers to mount fresh offensive to halt assisted dying bill

Peers will mount a new offensive to halt the assisted dying bill on Friday, tabling almost 1,000 new amendments to the legislation in an effort to run down the clock.More than half of the 942 amendments have been tabled by just seven members of the House of Lords, all of them vocal opponents of assisted dying (AD). A source close to the bill said it was possible it could in effect get filibustered if peers pushed many amendments to a vote.The bill – which began as a private member’s bill from Labour MP Kim Leadbeater – passed the House of Commons in June and is now in the House of Lords.On Thursday night, 65 peers including two cabinet secretaries, the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock and the former Tory leader Ruth Davidson warned that it would be anti-democratic for the Lords to kill the bill after it had been passed by a reasonable majority in the Commons