Health & Wellbeing

A much-loved paediatric consultant at Birmingham Children’s Hospital has turned from a professional into a fundraising dad after his son was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour. Barney Scholefield, who works in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at the hospital, has more recently become a full-time bedside father to two-year-old Fergus after he was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive form of cancer.

A pioneering partnership between West Midlands Ambulance Service and the University of Wolverhampton will see 30 life saving devices installed at locations across the West Midlands. The University of Wolverhampton has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Trust pledging its commitment to install defibrillators at its University campuses in Wolverhampton, Walsall, Telford and Burton as well as at partner Academy schools in the region.

Thousands of Birmingham carers are set for a wage boost after Birmingham City Council developed the new Birmingham Care Wage. The plan for private sector care workers on council contracts to be paid £7.50 an hour regardless of age instead of the Government’s new minimum wage (£7.20 an hour for those aged 25 and over, from 1 April) is outlined in the Business Plan and Budget 2016+.

Free, specialist advice and support about cancer is coming to West Midlands from Tuesday 23^rd February to Friday 26^th February. Macmillan Cancer Support’s mobile service will be visiting the area, with cancer information specialists on hand to answer questions and provide information. The team encourages anyone with worries or concerns relating to cancer to stop by, whether you’re living with or beyond cancer, or are a carer or loved one of someone who is.

Walsall College Beauty students received a lesson in the art of thai massage from an experienced beautician with over 14 years in the industry. Donna-Marie, owner of Fabulous Dahhlin Beauty in Walsall, visited the college to pass on her expert tips to Level 1, 2 and 3 students. She showed students how to give the increasingly popular thai massage, a deep tissue treatment which uses forearm and elbow techniques to apply pressure on certain points of the body.

Purchasing medicines online should soon be more secure after it was announced that containers will have to carry, as obligatory, a unique identifier and an anti-tampering device. Previous reports by Interpol have warned the majority of websites selling counterfeit medicines have Russian IP addresses and are re-routed through China to avoid detection — with the World Health Organisation recently putting a €70bn figure on the sector.

The women of Sparkhill and Sparkbrook are being urged not to miss their breast cancer screening appointments. The current rate of uptake in the neighbouring inner-city areas in Birmingham is just 50-60 percent – way below the national rate of 72 percent – and engaging women in the ethnically diverse communities is proving a challenge for the South Birmingham Breast Screening Service.

Health chiefs are inviting families to get ‘Sugar Smart’ when the Change4Life roadshow comes to Wolverhampton later this month. Its Sugar Smart campaign is touring the country, visiting 25 shopping centres nationwide. Families joining the roadshow at the Wulfrun Centre on Saturday 27 and Sunday 28 February, 2016, will be able to see live demonstrations of the new Sugar Smart app and get free information packs and ask staff questions about sugar. 

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) is urging local residents to support a new Fund to improve genetic testing for families at risk of the undiagnosed heart condition that killed Sir David Frost’s eldest son last year. The heart charity estimate that 11,000 people in the West Midlands are living with the faulty gene that can cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which led to Miles Frost’s sudden death at the age of just 31.

Ensuring there are enough clinical staff with the right skills to meet the demand for high-quality, safe healthcare is essential to the operation of the NHS. However, the current arrangements for managing the supply of clinical staff are fragmented and do not represent value for money, according to the National Audit Office. The arrangements for managing the supply of clinical staff involve the Department of Health, various arm’s-length bodies and healthcare commissioners and providers.

An exciting new walking challenge is being launched this month, encouraging people in Wolverhampton to team up and 'Beat The Street'. The seven-week walking and cycling challenge allows residents to collect points for the number of miles that they travel, be it by bike or on foot. Individual and team prizes are up for grabs, with a share of £5,000 available for the teams travelling the furthest during the challenge.

Sir Doug Ellis OBE has made an incredible donation worth £125,000 enabling QEHB Charity to purchase a Nexstim brain scanner. The Former Aston Villa FC chairman visited the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) and presented a cheque for £100,000 which is worth £125,000 with government Gift Aid taken into account to Ismail Ughratdar, Consultant Neurosurgeon, and Mike Hammond, Chief Executive of QEHB Charity.

Almost nine in ten local authorities (86 per cent) in the West Midlands are still limiting homecare visits for their elderly, ill and disabled residents to just 15 minutes, says UNISON in a report published. The report – entitled Suffering Alone at Home – is based on an online survey of 1,100 homecare workers and data obtained from a Freedom of Information request (FoI) to the 152 local authorities in England that commission social care visits. 

Birmingham St Mary’s Hospice is looking for local businesses and organisations to battle it out in their ‘Accumulator Challenge’. The three month fundraising challenge sets local businesses and groups the task of raising as much money as possible from a starting point of £50. Teams can organise bake sales, sports or social events, karaoke challenges, dress down days –the choices are endless!  This can be done through multiple events or just the one, and over the three months or just on one day.

Stark differences in access to new medicines to reduce the risk of strokes in people with the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation (AF) are revealed in a new report from the Atrial Fibrillation Association. The chance of receiving the newer treatments varies 16-fold across England, the report says. In one part of England 69% of patients receive the newer treatments – in another part just 4% are prescribed them.

Asthma UK is urging people with asthma to be vigilant in winter as data shows the number of people who die because of an asthma attack peaks in January and remains high in February and March. Data from the Office for National Statistics highlights that asthma is the cause of proportionately more excess winter deaths than other conditions and respiratory diseases were the underlying cause of death in more than a third of all excess winter deaths in 2014/15.