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ASH Daily News

11 November 2005

[View html version: http://www.globalink.org/nbuk]

HEADLINES

Mental health wards should not be exempt: Prof Appleby

Should the NHS subsidise NRT therapy? A columnist's views

Acute shortage of Environmental Health Officers in the UK

U.S: smoking rates are falling but not fast enough


FULL TEXT


Mental health wards should not be exempt: Prof Appleby


Professor Louis Appleby, National Clinical Director for Mental Health called for the "common ground" between public and mental health to be recognised as he criticised the decision to exempt the smoking ban from psychiatric wards.

Mental health wards are one of several residential environments exempt from the smoking ban outlined in the health bill tabled in UK parliament last week. Other exemptions include prisons and care homes.

Speaking at the annual chief nursing officers' conference, Prof Appleby said the "comorbidity" faced by many patients - whereby they may have a physical as well as a mental health problem - needed to be tackled by bringing together the mental health and public health agenda. Prof Appleby challenged the exemption, claiming mental health service users should be treated no differently to patients on acute wards in order to safeguard their physical wellbeing.

"Should mental health be any different from the rest of the NHS?" he asked. "Would we treat any other high-risk groups differently?"

"My first job in mental health was as a nursing assistant and it was part of my job to go around and give patients cigarettes! We have come a long way since then. Maybe it is time to take the final step and have no exemption", he said.

Prof Appleby said public health and mental health needed to come together in order to achieve preventative health. "There is a responsibility on all parts of the system to promote better public health."

The Guardian 10/11/05 http://www.guardian.co.uk/smoking/Story/0,,1639681,00.html#article_continue




Should the NHS subsidise NRT therapy? A columnist's views


Columnist Dr Phil Peverley (a GP in Sunderland) raises controversial views about subsiding NRT and smoking bans in Pulse. (Note this is an edited version of the opinion piece)

"The Government wants to ban smoking in pubs that serve food but not in those that don't. The reasoning is woolly to say the least. Combine this with the policy on 24-hour drinking, so the punters can pebbledash their livers until they look like lumps of clinkers, and it begins to look like frank hypocrisy.

Why this meddling in our personal lives? Is it to improve our health? Even if this were one of the functions of government, how do they justify it in the absence of evidence about passive smoking?

Smokers contribute much to our society; they pay more tax, they die younger and the illnesses they die from are usually shorter than the ones they would get it they avoided the evil weed.

Long exposure to the media and Government pontificating has led my smokers to believe their personal habit is a medical addiction. I have to counsel them, refer them to clinics and prescribe expensive nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) on the NHS.

What on earth is going on? If you smoke 20 cigarettes a day, you spend £35 a week. The patches cost about £7, so the punter is already £28 better off. Why should the NHS be funding these things?

NRT plus counselling only improves the success rate by 7%. Is that worth all the diversion of resources? While I'm talking to a smoker, I'm not talking to someone who might have a disease they didn't catch by choice.

Personal freedom is our greatest asset, and I would like to make a stand for the right to make bad decisions."

Pulse 12/11/05 Link to website: http://www.pulse-i.co.uk/paper/default.asp
Email your views: editor@pulse-i.co.uk



Acute shortage of Environmental Health Officers in the UK


There is an acute shortage of Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) in the UK which is putting the public at risk from food poisoning and also has implications for the proposed smoking bans.

The BBC highlighted that there are more than 700 vacancies for EHOs across the country and that nearly two-thirds of local authorities admit their environmental health departments are understaffed.

Staff shortages are forcing local authorities to scale back inspections at restaurants and catering outlets. The new responsibilities to police liquor licensing and smoking bans would put more pressure on resources. Geoff Makin, EHO manager at Coventry said "If we have to keep doing more and more, we will become less effective at the things we are doing."

Caterer & Hotelkeeper 10/11/05



U.S: smoking rates are falling but not fast enough


Smoking rates in the United States are declining but not fast enough for most states to reach a national goal set for 2010, federal health officials said on Thursday.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 20.9% of U.S. adults, or 44.5 million people, smoked in 2004, down from 21.6% in 2003 and 22.5% in 2002.

The number of heavy smokers is also declining. Last year, 12.1% of all smokers used 25 or more cigarettes a day, down from 19.1% of smokers in 1993, the survey of more than 31,000 adults indicated.

The data shows that prevention programs and higher tobacco taxes are producing results but the rate of decline is still not enough to reach a public health goal of reducing smoking to 12% or less of U.S. adults by the year 2010.

The goal has been set by the U.S. Surgeon General and Department of Health and Human Services. "We know that it's an ambitious goal but the fact that there are people or populations and some states starting to meet it clearly means it's attainable," said Corinne Husten, acting director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health said.

She said more inroads could be made if many more states stepped up comprehensive programs that include elements such as doctor interventions, educational awareness and attention to high-risk groups.

Reuters 10/11/05 http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=2005-11-10T222559Z_01_N10185896_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-SMOKING.XML

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