#health-inequality

#health-inequality

After years of wrangling, from this week new rules shield children in the UK from junk food advertisements. Those featuring processed food and drink products in 13 categories including soft drinks with added sugar, crisps, chocolate and sweets are now banned online, and can only be shown on broadcast TV after 9pm. In a month already strongly associated with the giving up of bad habits and turning over of new leaves, restraint on the part of advertisers has been made compulsory.

Our current opportunistic PSA [prostate-specific antigen] testing system is unstructured, inefficient and unfair a postcode lottery where some men succeed because they know to ask or can pay privately, while others are turned away despite repeated requests. Yet the data hide what cannot be modelled: eroded trust among communities who feel abandoned. Black men, already at higher risk, often believe the system fails them. Families bear devastating emotional and financial burdens from late-stage disease.

A baby, in Britain, in 2025, takes its stuttering final breaths. All deaths in infancy are harrowing. But the fact that this particular death might have been prevented had neonatal care not depended so heavily on charity, had the NHS not failed to fund more than two-thirds of the healthcare babies need is unforgivable. Mercifully, the dystopian scenario I've just described does not exist in the UK today. Although paediatric care is undeniably overstretched, it is at least regarded as a core, bedrock NHS service.

NICE recommends prioritizing personalized treatment for type 2 diabetes and expanding access to SGLT-2 inhibitors to prevent complications and save lives.

The findings highlight that heart disease and cancer lead to over 1.3 million deaths annually in the U.S., with many being preventable through early intervention.

The NHS is facing a crisis reminiscent of medieval health inequality, with spending soaring due to rising child poverty and untreated illnesses in the poorest communities.

The inquiry aims to address unacceptable risks women face during childbirth in the NHS, amid revelations of higher mortality rates among black and Asian mothers.