The Health News Australia September 15 2017

Overview

• Emergency departments across Adelaide— including the $2.3 billion Royal Adelaide Hospital — are chronically overcrowded, forcing unprecedented action to reduce pressure on the system, amid renewed warnings that patients’ lives are at risk.
• There are concerns too many Australian teenagers aren’t eating breakfast. New research has found up to one in five adolescents commonly skip breakfast and Australian children and adolescents aren’t going without breakfast every day “occasional skipping’’ is more common.
• According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, suicide is the leading cause of death for West Australians aged 15 to 54. Males account for 75% of suicides in Australia.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 15th of  September 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/ambulances-ramping-for-hours-are-leaving-no-cover-for-emergencies-union/news-story/afa3ada0eb653301e3d91ef8133a6d58

Emergency departments across the city — including the two point three billion dollar Royal Adelaide Hospital — are chronically overcrowded, forcing unprecedented action to reduce pressure on the system, amid renewed warnings that patients’ lives are at risk. A week after the new RAH opened its doors at the height of flu season, queues of ambulances are ramping in car parks for up to five hours and average waiting times have blown out beyond four hours.
Officials have blamed the public for getting old and sick — and for using emergency departments for “stubbed toes and toothaches” — prompting another action plan which the doctors’ union dubbed a “Groundhog Day” response to chronic crowding. Health Minister Jack Snelling said there had been “unprecedented” demand on the health system in the past week, with calls to zero zero zero running at fifty percent higher than the same time last year.
….
SA Ambulance Service will assess zero zero zero calls and send a nurse to low-level cases, or simply advise callers to see a general practitioner or pharmacist — a move the Opposition dubbed a “second class ambulance service”. Nurses will discharge some patients from hospitals to free up bed space faster. Extra beds will open at Modbury and Hampstead, and will be leased from private hospitals. Some patients brought in by ambulance will be admitted directly to wards rather than going through EDs. All non-urgent elective surgery will be postponed — two days after SA Health announced plans to “ramp up” such surgery now that the RAH is open.
There have been more than eight thousand five hundred presentations to metropolitan emergency departments in the past week, about one thousand more than the same time last year.

http://www.9news.com.au/health/2017/09/13/11/59/australian-teens-commonly-skip-breakfast

There are concerns too many Australian teenagers aren’t eating the so-called most important meal of the day, breakfast. New research, published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, has found up to one in five teenagers commonly skip breakfast. The authors wrote that while Australian children and adolescents aren’t going without breakfast every day “occasional skipping’’ is more common. Natasha Murray, spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia, says the results are worrying because eating breakfast is a great way to get in extra vitamins and minerals such as calcium.

“There’s research out there that says people who routinely skip breakfast have lower intakes of food groups including dairy, and as you know we recommend two to three serving per day,” said Miss Murray. She added that breakfast is also a great source of Vitamin B, folate and fibre.

Analysis of the two thousand eleven-two thousand twelve National Nutrition and Physical Activity survey found thirteen point two per cent of boys and eighteen point six percent of girls were breakfast skippers. The unhealthy habit increased with age, from five per cent of boys and eleven per cent of girls aged two to three years, to twenty five percent of boys and thirty six per cent of girls aged fourteen to seventeen years. Of those who did report eating breakfast, thirty six out of the nearly one thousand six hundred surveyed only consumed a beverage for breakfast on one day. The research also showed that kids who did habitually skip breakfast, most of them had a parent or primary caregiver who also skipped.

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/boys-do-cry-west-australian-farmers-break-silence-on-mental-health-issues-20170911-gyezz8.html

Financial stress, remoteness, loneliness and isolation are the factors that see more people taking their own lives in the country than in metropolitan West Australia. Topping a national average, suicide is the leading cause of death for West Australians aged fifteen to fifty four, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In two thousand fifteen the suicide rate in the Perth metropolitan area was thirteen point eight per one hundred thousand people, compared with nineteen point eight per one hundred thousand people for the rest of the state.

Wally Newman, a farmer of over forty years and a director at WA’s grain handling co-op CBH, has banded together with his colleagues John Hassell, Brian McAlphine and Simon Stead to tackle the sensitive issue with a series of candid and personal videos to be published on the company’s social media pages. In these videos, the men will talk frankly about how mental illness has impacted them, their families and communities.

Males account for seventy five per cent of suicides in Australia, according to Lifeline. In two thousand sixteen, LifeLine WA received fifty five thousand two hundred sixty six calls and provided education on suicide prevention to two thousand six hundred sixty six community members. Lifeline WA Chief Executive Lorna MacGregor said the CBH initiative, detailing the life factors leading to suicidal thoughts, was more important than ever.