News

In brief

One in six parents (17 per cent) of 15 year olds have failed to discuss sex with their children and a quarter have never tackled the subject of sexually transmitted infection, according to a survey by Marie Stopes International. Almost 90 per cent of people believe mothers and fathers should have the main responsibility for sex education and only 9 per cent believe it should lie with schools. A third of under 16s are sexually active and every year 15,000 girls aged under 18 have an abortion.

Small businesses lose 13m working dayas a year through back pain. The TUC, Forum of Private Business and Backcare have called for more guidance and resources for educating employers and employees about prevention.

Junior doctors and nurses at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Nigeria’s largest state-run hospital, have secured two-months’ unpaid backpay from the government after a two-week all-out strike.

Trade union representation among health and home care workers continues to rise in the US. Recently-published figures show that last year in the Los Angeles area alone 174,000 home care workers joined the Service Employees Union.

Credit cards that double as organ donor cards are to be launched from early in 2001. Up to a million Goldfish card holders are to be asked to consent to carry the cards, which will include the NHS donor symbol, and have their names added to the national register. Other card companies are expected to follow suit if the scheme is a success.

Public complaints against doctors are expected to have risen by almost 43 per cent over the past year, according to the General Medical Council, the doctors’ regulatory body. It is predicted that the GMC’s professional conduct committee will have heard 4,300 cases by the end of 2000, compared with 3,000 in 1999. The GMC has been considering reforms of doctors’ ‘self-regulation’ in the face of government criticism of the system.

Shell made profits equivalent to $35m a day during the autumn 2000 fuel crisis and BP made average monthly profits of $1bn during the same period. BP’s profits more than doubled during the first nine months of 2000.