The Last Place to go (if you’re not feeling well….)

Statistics revealed in recent media articles indicate that the very last place to go if you’re feeling unwell is…the doctor’s or the hospital!

Nigel Nelson wrote in the UK weekly The People, October 16th 2005,
 “The number of pensioners killed by wrongly prescribed medicine has risen by 75 per cent since Labour came to power. There were 337 deaths among the over 65s from adverse drug reactions last year compared with 194 in 1997.”

Describing the figures as “extremely alarming”, Liberal Democrat MP, Paul Burstow, who sits on the House of Commons Health Committee, added, “This is just the tip of the iceberg. Hundreds of bad reactions go unreported every year.”

Bad drug reactions increased in all groups over 50 years of age, reported as costing the NHS over £450 million per year.

Then Rick Wilson, director of Nutrition and Dietetics at King's College Hospital, and member of the Better Hospital Food programme panel of experts, stated, "Everyone knows that if you don't eat well then recovery is delayed or maybe will not happen at all!  Malnutrition is still common in our hospitals and care homes."

The Better Hospital Food programme was launched in May 2001 to improve catering across the health service, but evidently, four years on, there is still grave concern.

A recent review on the ‘Current Status of Mammography’ by the American College of Clinical Themography, concluded:
•    No screening mammography is justified for premenopausal women.
•    A baseline mammogram may be justified at between age 50 and 60.
•    Accountability and responsibility should be considered in regard to all radiation exposure and the accumulative biological effects.
•    Other non invasive tests should be promoted as part of a breast screening program. Thermography, Ultrasound, Breast Self Examination, and Clinical Breast Examination.

This is because the risks from mammography screening are far greater than the potential benefits. Women are not informed that apart from the fact that breast screening exposes them to an absorbed dose of radiation (‘rad’) several hundred times higher than a standard chest X-ray, mammography X-rays use a low energy form of ionising radiation which causes greater biologic damage. This form of X-ray is up to five times more likely to cause carcinogenic damage to DNA and cell tissue.

The situation is even worse for women in the United States, which routinely screens premenopausal women by mammography. Their practice is also to take two or more mammograms per breast annually in postmenopausal women. This contrasts with the more restrained European practice of a single view every two to three years.

Simple breast self-examination can be just as effective as mammography x-rays and is also a whole lot safer.

Perhaps the most notable recent media article on health issues comes from no less an august publication than the British Medical Journal, issue 2000;320:1561 entitled, “Doctors Go on 'Strike' and Death Rates Plummet”.

This reports that death rates in Israel dropped considerably since physicians in public hospitals implemented a program of sanctions three months ago, according to a survey of burial societies.

Doctors in the Israel Medical Association (IMA) began the action in March to protest against the government's proposed imposition of a new four-year wage contract. Of necessity, hundreds of thousands of visits to outpatient clinics have been cancelled or postponed along with tens of thousands of elective operations. However, emergency rooms, dialysis units, oncology departments, obstetric and neonatal departments, and other vital facilities have continued working normally. 

The Jerusalem Post surveyed non-profit burial societies, which perform funerals for the vast majority of Israelis, and found that the number of funerals has fallen drastically. One funeral parlour manager remembered the same thing occurred in 1983, during a similar action by the IMA, which lasted 4 and a half months. Then, the only area of Israel which was found to not have a reduction in its death rate was the city of Netanya - which just so to have "no-strike" clauses in doctors’  contracts at the city’s only hospital!

In a testimonial for Steven Ransome’s book, “Great News for Cancer in the 21st Century,” Frank D Wiewel, Former Chairman, Pharmacological and Biological Treatments Committee, Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is quoted as saying:
“The most dangerous place on planet earth is the hospital - next is the doctor’s office - followed closely by the dentist’s office.” 

So,  now you know: ‘Patient, heal thyself – it’s safer!’

©Neil Haddon 2005