Ruth Clegg Health and wellbeing reporter, BBC News Abbie Abbie first began using ketamine when she was 16 Abbie was 16 years old when she started using ketamine. It was the first time she had felt in control. The negative thoughts that had swamped her mind since a young age began to dissipate. Twelve years […]

Nic Marko Local Democracy Reporting Service Google The Rowan Suite maternity unit at Hartlepool Hospital became fully operational in 2020 A pause in the delivery of babies at a hospital, caused by staff shortages and illness, is being reviewed monthly by health chiefs. The midwife-led Rowan Suite maternity unit at the University Hospital of Hartlepool

Rob Sissons Health correspondent, BBC East Midlands BBC A digital imaging service to investigate suspected skin cancers has reduced waits for patients to be triaged, diagnosed and treated in Nottinghamshire Digital imaging of suspected skin cancers has dramatically cut waiting times for diagnosis and treatment in Nottinghamshire. Clinical photographers in parts of the county now

PA Media Sir Kier Starmer has set out his 10-year-plan to reform the NHS in England, based on a shift from hospitals to neighbourhood health hubs, a new focus on prevention and better use of technology. He said the government’s 162-page blueprint might be the last chance to put the health service “back on its

Getty Images Millions of patients will be treated closer to home under plans to “fundamentally rewire” the NHS in England, the prime minister has said. A new network of neighbourhood health hubs will be set up to shift care out of hospitals and into the community. Sir Keir Starmer said the NHS needed to “reform

Former health secretary Matt Hancock has denied claims the government’s attempt to throw a protective ring around care homes in 2020, early in the Covid pandemic, was empty rhetoric. In an irritable exchange he urged the Covid Inquiry to focus on the substance of what the government was doing at the time. Mr Hancock said

BBC There’s a saying that Robert F Kennedy Jr is very fond of. He used it on the day he was confirmed as US health secretary. “A healthy person has a thousand dreams, a sick person only has one,” he said as he stood in the Oval Office. “60% of our population has only one

James Melley Social Affairs Producer Getty Images Nicky Hastie, holding an image of her mother, attended the inquiry in person on Monday A civil servant’s assertion that there was a “generational slaughter within care homes” in the early days of the pandemic is a phrase that “chimes with the experience of thousands of our families”,

Jan, from Kent, was one of the first people in the world to take part in the trials of semaglutide. It is sold as Wegovy for weight-loss and as Ozempic for diabetes, although some people have been buying this version to lose weight. We all know somebody like Jan, who has tried every diet, and

Philippa Roxby Health reporter BBC They are the bête noire of many nutritionists – mass-produced yet moreish foods like chicken nuggets, packaged snacks, fizzy drinks, ice cream or even sliced brown bread. So-called ultra-processed foods (UPF) account for 56% of calories consumed across the UK, and that figure is higher for children and people who