Medical Journal News

Experts have called for a new alcohol strategy for England as deaths from alcohol reached a record high in 2023, with the average heavy drinker now older.An analysis by the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation showed 8273 deaths from alcohol in England in 2023, up from 5050 in 2006—a 60% increase.1 These were deaths from conditions caused entirely by alcohol consumption, including alcoholic liver disease and accidental poisoning. A further 14 370 deaths in 2023 were from conditions caused partially by alcohol.The current upward trend in deaths began in 2020 at the start of the covid pandemic, when 6984 deaths were recorded in the year.The UK’s last national alcohol strategy was published in 2012 and focused much of its attention on binge drinking and reducing harm among young people.2 But the Nuffield Trust said that this no longer reflected the reality of problem drinking in England. The analysis highlights...

In this paper by Lunny and colleagues (BMJ 2025;388:e079839, doi:10.1136/bmj-2024-079839, published 18 March 2025), there was a presentation error in figure 1, which has since been corrected in the article and PDF.

The BMJ points out the changed trajectory of life expectancy: after generations of improvement, progress on longevity has stalled.1 The situation is even more alarming if one looks at not just survival times but also “disability-free” life expectancy. Covid-19 greatly increased the proportion of adults living with disability.The news article focuses on cardiovascular disease and cancer and relates these fatal conditions to modifiable diet and exercise. Poor diet and inactivity are bad for health but are often embedded in social determinants like loneliness or deprivation. Social inequalities can kill.2 There is a strong “social gradient” for fatal heart attacks, with poor people in poor neighbourhoods most at risk.Policy makers in the UK seem reluctant to mention inequalities in relation to the new prevention agenda. The news article reports that life expectancy stalled after 2011. In 2012 the Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley passed a Health and Social Care Act. This...

More than 4000 doctors face having to pay a tax charge on their pensions as a result of the nationally agreed pension discrimination remedy, data have shown.Various official delays and problems over pensions and tax calculations are also making it difficult for doctors to make plans about their work and retirement.NHS data obtained by financial advisers under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act show that 4120 doctor and dentist members of the NHS Pension Scheme may have exceeded their annual allowance—the amount by which doctors’ pensions can be deemed to grow before being subject to additional tax charges—in certain tax years after rules are applied.The data emerged as the government confirmed a delay in NHS pension remedial service statements due to have been issued to doctors by 1 April that will affect the value of their pension benefits.“McCloud remedy”The government made changes to the NHS Pension Scheme in 2015, but...

On 16 March the health and social care secretary, Wes Streeting, made headlines by declaring in an interview that there was an “overdiagnosis” of mental health conditions. The comment was made in the context of discussing reforms to the welfare system that would focus on getting sick and disabled people off benefits such as Personal Independence Payments and into work. Streeting acknowledged that there was a spectrum of mental ill health but believed that overdiagnosis was part of the problem, with too many people being “written off.”Overdiagnosis describes a diagnosis that doesn’t benefit the person in question and makes people into patients unnecessarily. It can happen when diagnostic thresholds are expanded to include large groups of people with increasingly mild symptoms or when conditions are diagnosed that are unlikely to progress to cause harm.1Concerns about overdiagnosis have been raised in a number of areas of medicine, including ongoing debates about...

At the beginning of November 2024, during a spell of exceptionally hot weather, 35 year old Mizanur Rahman developed a high fever. Rahman, an electrician in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, couldn’t afford to miss a single day’s work, so the next morning he set off again. That evening his fever worsened. Five days later Rahman was admitted to Sadar Hospital and was diagnosed with “Dacca fever,” otherwise known as dengue.Sadar is one of the largest government hospitals in the region, and a designated specialist dengue hospital. An entire floor is filled with patients with dengue and their families, sleeping in corridors, next to the stairs, and even in front of the toilets, wherever they can find room.“There are a lot of dengue cases every year, especially during the November to January period,” says Kamruzzaman Juwel, a medical officer at the hospital. “There are limited beds and we aren’t able to accommodate...

New testimony gathered by the BMA details instances of physician associates (PAs) and anaesthesia associates (AAs) making incorrect clinical decisions, dangerously prescribing medication, introducing themselves as doctors, and taking part in surgical procedures for which they were not qualified.1The BMA said that the scale of the evidence it had gathered through an online reporting portal between November 2023 and February 2025 showed that the NHS had failed in its duty to ensure patient safety. The 600 reports of serious concerns gathered by the BMA have been submitted as evidence to the government commissioned Leng review.23 But the BMA said that the NHS must introduce urgent interim measures while the review is ongoing, including an immediate halt to recruitment of PAs and AAs, implementation of the BMA’s safe scope of practice and supervision guidance,4 and an immediate investigation into PAs and AAs being placed on doctor rotas.The BMA has now published...