Downing Street’s radical plan for the NHS: shifting it from treatment to prevention

In Lancaster the community nurse Lizzie Holmes knocks on doors to talk to people who are unwell but reluctant to accept NHS help. In Blackpool, “community connectors” help low-income families get their children into healthy habits early in life. Both do necessary, vital, proactive work known as health prevention – stopping illness occurring in the first place and spotting it early when it does. The idea is that this will create a virtuous circle of a healthier population and thus less need for NHS care.But while the initiatives described in a Guardian investigation are imaginative and effective, they are also atypical of the way the NHS works

Britain’s ‘medieval’ health inequality is devastating NHS, experts say

Britain’s “medieval” levels of health inequality are having a “devastating” effect on the NHS, experts have warned, with the health service estimated to be spending as much as £50bn a year on the effects of deprivation.Rising rates of child poverty have led to a growing burden on hospitals, with the knock-on cost to the NHS comparable to the annual defence budget.One senior NHS figure said they were seeing “medieval” levels of untreated illness in some of Britain’s poorest communities, including people attending A&E “with cancerous lumps bursting through their skin”.Another said hospitals were witnessing a “chilling” trend of vulnerable people, young and old, deliberately self-harming to secure an overnight stay. Concern has also been raised about rising rates of “Dickensian” illnesses, including scabies, rickets and scarlet fever

Cutting personal independent payments: potentially devastating or justified? | Letters

As predicted (Starmer offers ‘massive concessions’ on welfare bill to Labour rebels, 26 June), an attempt has been made to salvage the welfare bill. Discontented MPs and disabled people alike will welcome the assurance that people currently receiving personal independence payments (Pip) or the health element of universal credit will be protected from changes. But the episode is damaging, has caused thousands of disabled people needless worry, and may come to be seen as pivotal in Keir Starmer’s tenure.There is something deeply invidious about having two classes of benefit recipients – the protected current recipients, and those making future claims. At the same time, it is clear that the benefits system does need reform and, in particular, needs to support people into work rather than taking a punitive and brutal approach to cost saving

Living with polycystic ovary syndrome can be difficult and lonely | Letters

Thank you for publishing the article about polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) by Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff (I was diagnosed with PCOS – and was soon drowning in misinformation, 22 June). It resonated with my experience of diagnosis and frustration at the complete lack of support. I was first tested in my teens and told my blood test was normal. I was retested at 34 when I went to my GP about weight gain and struggling with exhaustion. When I was confirmed to have PCOS I was warned about the health issues, and told the best thing I could do was lose weight, even though this would be very difficult, and to come back when I was struggling to conceive

Calls to clean up England’s ‘toxic air’ as GP visits for asthma attacks rise 45%

The number of patients being treated by GPs for asthma attacks has increased by 45% in a year, prompting calls for urgent action to tackle toxic levels of air pollution.There were 45,458 presentations to family doctors in England between January and June this year, according to data from the Royal College of General Practitioners research and surveillance centre. Across the same period in 2024, there were 31,376 cases.The figures come a week after a damning report by the Royal College of Physicians revealed that 99% of the UK population was now breathing in “toxic air”. Air pollution was killing 500 people a week and costing £27bn a year in ill health, NHS care and productivity losses, the research showed

‘His sleeping bag was frozen solid’: the highs – and lows – of the Duke of Edinburgh’s award

Biblical rain, meagre food rations and – in one particularly notable case – a frozen, dead sheep. The Duke of Edinburgh’s award (DofE) prides itself on offering teenagers experiences that a classroom cannot replicate – and the charity has recently said more people are signing up than ever before.More than 342,000 young people took on tasks to achieve their bronze, silver or gold award last year, according to the DofE. For people who shared their abiding memories of the scheme with the Guardian, many involved getting very wet somewhere deep in the UK countryside.James, 29, from Manchester, completed his gold award in 2013