The Thin End

The Thin End has referred to the 'hidden' health cost of the COVID pandemic in previous articles.  Clearing the decks to prevent the National Health Service being overwhelmed meant that others had their diagnosis and treatment put on hold.  What the government should do now is to learn the lesson to build resilience into the system.  Else, we are saving the lives of those directly affected by a pandemic while allowing the health and lives of others to be lost.  This has been particularly evident in cancer services.  It is challenging to see the real ethics of that choice.  Sacrificing Peter to save Paul is not the best approach.   On the contrary, it had all the hallmarks of a panic response.  NHS England has now prioritised cancer services, but an analysis produced this month by The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) says that the UK government must now use the opportunity of restarting cancer services in the NHS to "build back better." ...

Consuming a diet high in fibre has been linked with a reduced incidence of breast cancer in an analysis of all relevant prospective studies.  The findings are published early online in CANCER , a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. Because studies have generated inconsistent results regarding the potential relationship between fibre intake and breast cancer,  Dr Maryam Farvid of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and her colleagues searched for all relevant prospective studies published through July 2019. By pooling data from the 20 observational studies they identified, individuals with the highest consumption of fibre had an eight per cent lower risk of breast cancer. Soluble fibre was associated with lower risks of breast cancer, and higher total fibre intake was associated with a lower risk in both premenopausal and postmenopausal women.  Dr Farvid says that the study “contributes to the evidence that lifestyle factors...

Many people will be affected COVID-19 beyond those directly infected by it.  Lives will be lost as a result of the efforts to save lives from the virus.  This is a sad reality of the response to the pandemic. As we focus on the potential loss of life through the virus, we need also to consider why so many others have had to put off possible life-saving treatments, or had operations cancelled. We must also consider that the long term impact of the economic consequences will be considerable. The problems we face are due to a decade of austerity, which made preparations for a pandemic almost impossible to achieve. Of course, resources are always going to be stretched in such circumstances.   But it would be wrong to assume that such a pandemic was unforeseen.   On the contrary, all NHS Trusts have made some contingency plans for such a virus. It would be easy enough to imagine that a decade of underfunding of the NHS has had no significant impact.  Bu...