Health

Next week’s strike by resident doctors in England may be averted after ministers offered the British Medical Association a fresh deal. The doctors’ union has agreed to put the offer to members over the coming days – if they support it, the five-day walkout starting on Wednesday 17 December could be called off. The offer…

Much of the £10.9bn in taxpayer money lost to fraud and error in Covid support schemes is now “beyond recovery”, a report has said. The response to the pandemic had led to “enormous outlays of public money which exposed it to the risk of fraud and error” with many organisations unprepared, the Covid Counter Fraud…

Two more UK hospitals are bringing back masks for staff and visitors amid a sharp rise in flu cases. Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire, and Frimley Park Hospital near Camberley, Surrey, will announce the change on Tuesday, the BBC understands. Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the two sites, said the number of…

James GallagherHealth and science correspondent BBC A therapy that would once have been considered a feat of science fiction has reversed aggressive and incurable blood cancers in some patients, doctors report. The treatment involves precisely editing the DNA in white blood cells to transform them into a cancer-fighting “living drug”. The first girl to be…

A new strain of mpox, previously called monkeypox, has been detected in a person in England, say UK health officials. The virus is a mix of two major types of the mpox virus, and was found in someone who recently returned from travelling in Asia. Officials say they are still assessing the significance of the…

Teenagers as young as 15 are seeking help after receiving botched Botox treatment and fillers, a charity has said. Advice Direct Scotland (ADS) says it wants tighter restrictions on cosmetic procedures after receiving hundreds of complaints about procedures. The Scottish government has proposed legislation to make non-surgical treatments illegal for under-18s and require procedures to…

Catherine Burns,Health correspondent, Vicki Loader,Health producerand Harriet Agerholm Getty Images Hundreds of GPs across England have told the BBC they think mental health problems are being over-diagnosed. One commonly-held view by family doctors, our research suggests, is that society tends to over-medicalise normal life stresses. But they’re also concerned about how hard it is to…

Getty Images Diseases like pneumonia and flu must be taken much more seriously in older people, England’s chief medical officer has warned. Sir Chris Whitty said some doctors do not appreciate that an infection can significantly increase the risk of a stroke or heart attack. NHS data shows that adults over 70 are much more…