Media Watch: teenage time bomb
- Published: 28 August 2008 09:00
- Author: Dave West
- More by this Author
- Last Updated: 27 August 2008 15:36
- Reader Responses
The NHS is facing a "teenage time bomb", several newspapers warned this week, based on statistics showing increased admissions of young people to hospital.
Teenage admissions are up 23 per cent since 2000 according to analysis by the Conservatives - a "bombshell" figure revealing a "shocking health crisis", as The Sun had it.
The access to drugs debate also rumbled on. A quarter of cancer specialists polled said they avoided telling patients about products that had not been approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.
"Doctors are keeping cancer patients in the dark about new drugs that could extend their lives," observed the Daily Mail.
Plight of patients
Drugs made page one of The Sunday Times thanks to a letter from 26 oncologists. NICE was "ignoring the plight of patients forced to sell their cars and remortgage their houses to pay for cancer treatments", they said, as translated by the newspaper.
Also attracting coverage were the musings of Paul Goddard, a former radiology section president of the Royal Society of Medicine. The health service was being led into "meltdown" thanks to targets, bureaucracy and "excessive management", he told the Daily Mail, Today and others. "I don't have a political axe to grind," he claimed.
What he definitely did have was a book to sell. Look out for Professor Goddard's The History of Money, Medicine and Politics. We assume he'll be donating the proceeds to a good cause.
