News

In brief

A new organisation which aims to promote ‘positive approaches to sexual health’ has been launched at an inaugural conference in London.

‘Until now there has been no national body bringing together those involved in primary health care, education and youth work, contraception and fertility services, sexual health promotion, HIV/AIDS and psychosexual services’, said Jo Adams, chair of the Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH).

The General Medical Council has lifted its longstanding ban on advertising by surgeons and other hospital specialists. The decision has been descibed as ‘worrying’ by the president of the Royal College of Surgeons.

Welcoming the change, Guy Howland, chief executive of the Patients’ Association, said: ‘We don’t think people should be encouraged to bypass their GP and go direct to specialists—although that could come in a later stage of development’.

The charity Medical & Scientific Aid for Vietnam, Laos & Cambodia is appealing for £30,000 to help fund a centre in Vietnam for victims of landmines.

Donations should be sent to: Dr Madeleine Sharp, MSAVLC, 49 Baginton Road, Coventry CV3 6JX.

An inquiry into inequality in Britain, established and broadcast by Channel 4, has proposed that there should be a standing commission to montior trends in income inequality. It also concluded that company executives should earn no more than 25 times that of the lowest-paid person they employ.

The NHS is now the leading provider of private health care in Britain, according to industry experts. Paybeds in NHS trusts last year accounted for almost a sixth of the private health care market. But there are no official figures available for the number of paybeds: the Department of Health stopped collecting data in 1991.

Reproductive tract infections amount to a worldwide ‘silent pandemic’, with more than a million women and children dying every year from the complications, according to a new briefing from the Panos Institute.

The existence of two-tier health care in the NHS has been confirmed by a senior trust manager. Derek Smith, chief executive of King’s Healthcare, told the trust’s annual public meeting that patients of GP fundholders faced shorter waits than others. ‘This is in effect a two-tier NHS, and while I understand the reasons it exists, I cannot justify it to King’s patients,’ he said.