The Health News United Kingdom January 8 2018

• Health experts have told parents to limit children to just two 100-calorie snacks per day in a bid to cut obesity. A new campaign from Public Health England is targeting parents after figures showed children are on average consuming 3 unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks a day. PHE said children can easily consume three times more sugar than recommended per day. PHE is working with the food industry to cut 20% of sugar from the products children consume most by 2020.
• A new study has shown that women are being left at risk of repeat heart attacks and early death because doctors see heart disease as a male problem.  Researchers from The University of Leeds and the British Heart Foundation claim women are dying because many are not offered stents to unblock arteries, or prescribed statins, after their first heart attack. Around 42,000 men and 28,000 women die from coronary heart disease in Britain each year, with most deaths related to an original heart attack.
• A health tourist has left a hospital with an unpaid debt of more than £530,000. The non-EU patient racked up the highest ever recorded health tourism bill at a Manchester hospital. The University of Central Manchester NHS Trust was saddled with the debt of £532,498 in 2017, which was revealed under freedom of information laws.
  However hospital bosses refused to reveal what country the patient came from or what treatment they received citing ‘patient confidentiality’.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 8th of January 2018. Read by Tabetha Moreto.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/limit-children-to-just-two-100calorie-snacks-a-day-health-experts-tell-parents-a3730181.html

Health experts have told parents to limit children to just two one hundred-calorie snacks per day in a bid to cut obesity. A new campaign from Public Health England is targeting parents after figures showed children are on average consuming three unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks a day. Each year children are eating nearly four hundred biscuits, more than one hundred twenty cakes, buns and pastries, around one hundred portions of sweets and nearly seventy of both chocolate bars and ice creams – washed down with more than one hundred fifty juice drink pouches and cans of fizzy drink.

PHE said children can easily consume three times more sugar than recommended per day. Its new ChangeforLife campaign encourages parents to “Look for one hundred calorie snacks, two a day max,” to help them offer healthier snacks in a bid to tackle the obesity epidemic that is seeing a third of children leave primary school overweight or obese. Half of children’s sugar intake, currently around seven sugar cubes a day, comes from unhealthy snacks and sugary drinks, leading to obesity and dental decay.
….
This is while the recommended daily maximum is no more than five cubes of sugar for four to six-year-olds and no more than six cubes for seven to ten-year-olds per day. The campaign, which is the first ChangeforLife to promote healthier snacks, will offer parents special offers on a range of healthier snacks, including fruit and vegetables at selected supermarkets.

PHE said its new advice applies to all snacks apart from fruit and vegetables, as children should still be encouraged to eat a variety of these to achieve their five a day.

PHE is working with the food industry to cut twenty percent of sugar from the products children consume most by two thousand twenty.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/01/08/women-likely-die-heart-attack-doctors-see-male-problem-study/

A new study has shown that women are being left at risk of repeat heart attacks and early death because doctors see heart disease as a male problem.  Researchers from The University of Leeds and the British Heart Foundation claim women are dying because many are not offered stents to unblock arteries, or prescribed statins, after their first heart attack.

Around forty two thousand men and twenty eight thousand women die from coronary heart disease in Britain each year, with most deaths related to an original heart attack. But the new study, which looked at data from more than one hundred eighty thousand people over ten  years, found three times the expected number of women died in the first year of a heart attack, compared to men.

Experts claim women are being denied life saving treatment because they are not considered at high risk. Professor Chris Gale, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the University of Leeds who co-authored the study said: “We need to work harder to shift the perception that heart attacks only affect a certain type of person.”

The research found that women were less likely than men to receive the recommended treatments after a heart attack. Women who had the type of attack where the coronary artery is completely blocked by a blood clot, were thirty four per cent less likely than men to receive procedures which clear blocked arteries and restore blood flow to the heart, such as bypass surgery or a stent. Critically, when women did receive all of the treatments recommended for patients who have suffered a heart attack, the number of women dying decreased dramatically.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/health-tourist-racked-up-more-11813971

A health tourist has left a hospital with an unpaid debt of more than five hundred thirty thousand pounds. The non-European Union patient racked up the highest ever recorded health tourism bill at a Manchester hospital. The University of Central Manchester NHS Trust was saddled with the debt of five hundred thirty two thousand four hundred ninety eight pounds in two thousand seventeen, which was revealed under freedom of information laws.

However hospital bosses refused to reveal what country the patient came from or what treatment they received citing ‘patient confidentiality’. The previous highest health tourist debt was a Nigerian mother called Priscilla, forty three years old, who jetted into Heathrow as she was pregnant with quadruplets. She confessed on a BBC show that she had no way of paying a three hundred thirty one thousand bill after giving birth at Saint Mary’s Hospital in west London.

The Government hopes to recoup five hundred million pounds a year after introducing new measures to stop the scandal of health tourism which costs the NHS two billion pounds a year. In some cases non-EU patients will have to pay up front for some operations and or have to show ID to get treatment.