The long term harms of alcohol are being minimised in industry funded education, find Madlen Davies and Hristio Boytchev
Universities and schools are being urged to join a growing movement in Ireland and the UK that seeks to drive out the alcohol industry from any influence on public health advice on drinking.
A campaign in Ireland has led to educational programmes funded by the alcohol industry being removed from schools.1 But industry backed groups still provide alcohol education in UK schools, including a theatre group funded by drinks giant Diageo. Universities are also targeted: Drinkaware, a charity funded by major alcohol producers and retailers, venues, and restaurant groups, funds freshers’ education materials, including a free cup to measure alcohol units.
The public health community is calling for an Ireland-style ban on materials by industry associated charities because they normalise drinking, are poorly evaluated, and take up space that otherwise could be filled by
Overseas doctors on an England-wide trainee scheme are being paid less than trainees employed by trusts and face reduced benefits, finds Madlen Davies
English hospital trusts have been accused of using doctors from overseas as “cheap labour” as part of fellowship schemes in which they can be paid less than doctors employed by trusts and sent home if they become pregnant, The BMJ has found.
Foreign doctors come to English hospital trusts as “fellows” as part of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges’ medical training initiative (MTI) scheme.1 They work for two years in the NHS to gain experience that they will take back to their home countries afterwards. A proportion of fellows are sponsored, for example by their home country, and others are employed directly by an NHS trust.
In some NHS trusts fellows receive the same pay and benefits as employed doctors, but University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust, and Walsall Healthcare NH
With the war in Ukraine the targeting of healthcare settings has once again come under the spotlight. Madlen Davies reports on the efforts to gather evidence of war crimes and why so few incidents have been successfully prosecuted
Oleh Tkachenko was delivering bread when he heard an explosion. He works as a pastor in a Baptist church in Vuhledar, a city in the southern Donetsk Oblast region of Ukraine. He ran to the city’s hospital immediately and saw its windows were shattered, with three people lying in the street and two on the hospital’s steps. One woman was already dead. He helped a mother struggling with a pram to a bomb shelter. On the way he saw two ambulances and the first aid station completely burnt. There were hundreds of pieces of shrapnel everywhere. “At first I was puzzled,” he said. “I couldn’t understand what it was but then I saw the head of the rocket and I saw right away it was a cluster munition.” The 24 February attack killed four civilians and inju
A highly critiqued paper in a British journal has been cited in US legal cases to restrict access to abortion. Attempts to retract the paper by insiders at the journal have failed, leading to a row over editorial independence. Madlen Davies reports
The British Journal of Psychiatry has been criticised over its decision not to retract a widely critiqued paper on abortion, which has been used in US legal cases to restrict access to the procedure. Three of the journal’s international board members have resigned after the journal and its owner, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, ignored the advice of its own internal panel to retract the paper, The BMJ and Newsnight can reveal.
One former board member told The BMJ that the journal and the royal college feared being sued by the paper’s author, as she threatened legal action after being notified her paper was being investigated. The paper, published in 2011, concluded that “women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% incr
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