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• A drug court in Mississippi will start offering mental health services. The services will be available in the fourth Circuit Drug Court in Washington, Sunflower and Leflore counties. The court has received a 3-year, $400,000 federal grant to cover the cost of hiring a mental health therapist, a peer support specialist and a supervising officer for drug court participants.
• The first of three industrial-sized tents to house San Diego’s homeless opened Friday as part of the city’s efforts to contain a hepatitis A outbreak. About 20 people made their way to bunk beds Friday in a tent that will house 350 single men and women. 2 other giant tents will open later this month — 1 for families and 1 for veterans. San Diego turned to tents to get people off the streets and contain a hepatitis A outbreak that has killed 20 people in the past year.
• Aetna’s board of directors approved on Sunday the U.S. health insurer’s sale to drugstore chain operator CVS Health Corp for approximately $207 per share in cash and stock. The $69 billion deal will be this year’s largest corporate acquisition. It will combine one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) and pharmacy operators with one of its oldest health insurers, whose far-reaching business ranges from employer healthcare to government plans nationwide.

Overview

• Australian women could soon trade two-yearly Pap smears for a more accurate test every five years, in what health experts say is one of the biggest shake-ups to cancer screening in decades.

• Drug companies will be forced to give the Federal Government full refunds in cases where their medicines do not work.

• The Centre for Personalised Immunology at the Australian National University (ANU) is the first centre of its kind in the world, that will treat rare immune disorders.

• A new NHS England campaign says that parents of young children with minor illnesses should take them to pharmacies rather than GPs or A&E. It follows a survey which found just six percent of parents with under-5s would go to a pharmacist first. NHS England said visits to GPs and A&E for these “self-treatable” conditions, like stomach ache, cost cost £850m a year. A patients’ group said but parents should not be put off seeing a doctor. GPs’ leaders said parents of children with a very high temperature that doesn’t go away should still seek help from a medical expert.
• NHS figures show that the number of admissions to hospital for eating disorders has nearly doubled in six years.  Data from NHS Digital show admissions for conditions including anorexia and bulimia reached 13,885 between April 2016 and 2017 – the highest levels seen in six years. The figures show that this is almost double the 7,260 admissions seen in hospitals in England the year up to April 2011.
• The charity Age UK has said that more than one in three people in England diagnosed with dementia are not getting the follow-up care they are entitled to.  The NHS specifies that everyone diagnosed with the condition should have an individual care plan that is reviewed at least once a year. But Age UK found that as of November, out of the 458,461 people with a recorded diagnosis of dementia, only 282,573 had a new care plan or at least one care plan review on record in the previous 12 months.

Overview

• The New South Wales North Coast is shaping up as a key battleground in the state election and the grey vote will be pivotal to the outcome.

• An interim report on Victoria’s ambulance service shows response-time performance has fallen steadily over the past six years.

• A doctor who has been working at the Australian-managed Ebola treatment centre in Sierra Leone will undergo a 21-day observation period for Ebola in the United Kingdom, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says.

• A group of Indiana health and business organizations is pushing for a repeal of some legal protections given to smokers. The Indianapolis Business Journal reported that The Alliance for a Healthier Indiana hopes to get rid of a state law that bans employers from screening job candidates for tobacco use. A bill introduced by Republican state Senator Liz Brown of Fort Wayne would repeal the nineteen ninety one law and has the alliance’s support.
• California is reeling from a particularly severe surge in cases of the flu—with pharmacies running out of medicine, packed emergency rooms and a rising death toll. State health officials say that 27 people younger than 65 have died of the flu in California since October. That’s compared to three the same time last year. According to health officials, there’s no region of the state where people were being spared from the flu.
• The Los Angeles Times has reported that evidence from a new National Health Interview Survey indicates the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders has reached a plateau in the United States. The question was answered for 30,502 children from three to seventeen years old between two thousand fourteen and two thousand sixteen, according to the Times, and in seven hundred eleven instances, the answer was yes.