News in brief 2

The NHS Confederation has hit back at allegations from a right-wing think-tank that the health service has too many managers. A pamphlet from the Centre for Policy Studies, Resuscitating the NHS, argued there were as many managers as nurses in the NHS but the Confederation pointed out that many of the 26,000 managers are actually nurses and doctors with only one manager for every 10,000 patients.

www.cps.org.uk
www.nhsconfed.org

Did you know that the risk of addiction to nicotine is greater than to cocaine? Or that cigarette butts take up to five years to biodegrade? The BMA’s Tobacco FactFile, launched last month, has the answers to all these queries and more. Aimed at health professionals, educationalists and the public, the online resource has been welcomed by tobacco research pioneer Professor Sir Richard Doll as ‘a treasury of information’.

www.tobaccofactfile.org

Startling new research suggests that medical treatment – especially injections – is responsible for more HIV infection in Africa than sexual transmission. A unique analysis of data published in the International Journal of STD and AIDS this month reports that many mothers uninfected with HIV have children who are HIV-positive and that countries like Zimbabwe with the best access to medical care have some of the highest HIV rates. Authors say their findings have ‘profound implications’ for public health in Africa.

www.rsm.ac.uk/new/pr126.htm

Official NHS waiting list figures are hopelessly unreliable, results from an Audit Commission survey of NHS trusts suggests. Over half of the 41 trusts audited showed evidence of reporting errors, with three trusts deliberately fiddling the figures.

Wendy Moore