In brief

Government figures published since the election have shown a seven percent rise in the number of people waiting up to a year for hospital treatment. Statistics showing big reductions in the number of two-year waiters were published a week before the election, but the Department of Health had said it could not produce corresponding data for people waiting less than a year.

’A sex education programme should be treated as a positive opportunity for young people to understand and be in control of their emerging sexualities’, according to A framework for school sex education, published by the Sex Education Forum. The forum, a group of 25 organisations, urges that issues such as inequalities of power, gender and stereotyping be readily discussed.

The Thai government has decided to tone down its Aids awareness campaign, launched last year, because of fears that it is undermining the country’s £2.5bn a year tourist industry. The United Nations estimates that by the year 2000 one in four of Thai adults will be infected with HIV. At brothels in the north east of the country over 80% of women tested were HIV positive.

The British government has so far refused to drop its opposition to the proposed EC ban on tobacco advertising, due to be debated again in November, despite rumours that an internal Department of Health report argues that a ban could reduce smoking by up to % percent.

Meanwhile in France the Ministry of Health has produced that final draft of a bill that will outlaw smoking in enclosed public spaces, public transport, schools and colleges, and in Australia a court has awarded a psychologist £35,000 damages against her employer for exposing her to passive smoking.

The number of men committing suicide is rising at an alarming rate, according to the Samaritans. Over the last decade the suicide rate among men under 25 has gone up 74 percent. Almost three times as may men as women commit suicide.

The London Homelessness Forum, a consortium of over 70 voluntary and statutory agencies, says children in the 40,000 homeless families in London are not getting the services they are entitled to under the new Children Act.

Blood donation has become compulsory in Beijing, as a result of a ruling of the People’s Congress requiring all male residents of the city between 18 and 55, and women between 18 and 50, to give blood, provided they pass a medical screening. According to the Beijing Public Health Bureau the number of voluntary donations falls far short of the demand. Citizens who donate blood will get a day off work, a ‘nutrition allowance’ and ‘priority services’.