Biobank: UK health data of 500,000 people for sale in China

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…

Papworth invented a technique, called Donation after Circulatory Death (DCD), for retrieving hearts from donors whose life support systems have been switched off, which now makes up about a quarter of all heart transplants in the UK. The work was, however, funded by the hospital’s charity, rather than the NHS.

This is famously the case in the Meningitis Belt – which stretches across 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, from Senegal to Ethiopia. Dust, high temperatures and low humidity throughout the dry season are thought to damage the back of the throat and give the bacteria a route into the body. This triggers regular epidemics.