NEWS
RCN warns of patient safety risks
A perfect storm of pressures risks engulfing health and social care services in England in the coming months, according to analysis by the RCN. In a new report, ‘10 unsustainable pressures on the health and care system in England’, the RCN has identified 10 key indicators which find the stress those services are under is already enormous, refuting recent ministerial claims they’re sustainable.
Those indicators include record emergency waiting times, only one of a number of factors which the report brands “clearly a symptom of an unsustainable system”. Those waits include so-called ‘corridor care’ – the time patients spend on trolleys in hospital corridors before being admitting to a hospital bed – which the report says is “fundamentally unsafe and must not be normalised”. The report identified as another key factor the length of time the nursing workforce has been severely depleted, with one in ten registered nurse posts vacant since 2017. Now there are over 38,000 vacancies in the NHS in England alone. Other key indicators include: l Patients waiting more than 12 hours for admission to a hospital bed (‘trolley waits’) is at a record high – a nearly nine-fold increase since October 2019
l Dozens of hospitals are running at dangerously high levels of bed occupancy, with some at levels above 95%.
l Registered nurse sickness levels rocketing with 88,000 more days lost to sickness compared to pre-pandemic.
l District nurse numbers falling by 44% and school nurses by over 30% since 2009.
RCN director for England, Patricia Marquis, said: “Speak to any nurse and they will tell you just how concerned they are for their patients as well as their colleagues. They have known for a long time just how the pressures have been growing and they can see the risk to patient care every single day in every part of health and care. “This was coming long before the pandemic and is a direct consequence of a long-term failure to invest in the nursing workforce. The Government must wake up to the reality and provide the investment that is needed to ensure patient care is not damaged any further. “This starts by delivering a pay rise that recognises their skill and professionalism to prevent an exodus of experienced nurses and in the long term there must be a legal responsibility at ministerial level for delivering staffing for safe and effective health and care services.”
NICE approves long-acting injectable HIV treatment
NICE has recommended the first long- acting injectable treatment for HIV-1 infection in adults. It is estimated that around 13,000 people will now be eligible for treatment with cabotegravir with rilpivirine in England. Current treatment for HIV-1 is lifelong antiretroviral tablets taken each day. The aim is to keep the number of virus particles in the blood (the viral load) so low that it cannot be detected or transmitted between people. Cabotegravir with rilpivirine is recommended as an option for adults with HIV-1 infection when antiretroviral medicines they are already taking to treat HIV-1 have kept the virus at a low level and where there is no evidence to suspect viral resistance, or previous failure of nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) and integrase inhibitors (INIs). Clinical trial results show that cabotegravir with rilpivirine is as effective as oral antiretrovirals at keeping the viral load low.
Imperial launches new institute to tackle infectious disease threats The Institute will see scientists working
Imperial College London has launched a new institute to tackle some of the biggest challenges in infectious disease. The ‘Institute of Infection’ will unite scientists from medicine and life sciences with mathematicians, engineers, physicists and a range of other fields to work together in new ways, harnessing their combined expertise to tackle emerging and longstanding issues in infectious disease.
The aim of the Institute is to address some of the biggest unanswered questions, including ‘how is climate change impacting the spread of diseases transmitted by flies and mosquitoes?’, ‘how are gene-editing technologies helping to reduce the spread of disease (such as Dengue and Zika)?’, and ‘how can animal vaccination programmes help to curb diseases which also affect humans?’ Professor Charles Bangham, from Imperial’s Department of Infectious Disease and co-director of the Institute of Infection, said: “Our new Institute will draw on Imperial’s vast strengths across engineering, natural sciences, business and medicine like never before. We have been planning the Institute for many years to tackle existing as
on every class of organism that cause infections, including: viruses like influenza and HIV; bacteria that cause tuberculosis, food poisoning and typhoid; fungi such as Aspergillus (black mould); and protozoa such as the parasites which cause malaria and ‘sleeping sickness’. Professor Jake Baum, from Imperial’s
well as emerging infectious disease threats: the global pandemic gives us a strong reminder of the need to work together on these challenges, and gives the launch an extra urgency. “We hope it will encourage new
opportunities, ideas and research projects where these disciplines combine, working with the College’s extensive network of collaborators in the UK and around the world.”
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Department of Life Sciences and co-director of the Institute of Infection, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has really brought home how much damage and suffering infectious diseases can cause and it’s also shown what scientists can achieve when we work together towards common goals. “But while much of the focus has been on emerging infectious threats, the world still needs us to find better ways of tackling existing infectious diseases that continue to take a huge toll, like malaria and HIV, as well as broader issues like antimicrobial resistance (AMR). As has been done so successfully during the pandemic, we can bring together researchers from across different disciplines and devote the same kind of collective brainpower to finding new ways of preventing and treating infectious diseases.”
JANUARY 2022
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