Revealed: The game-changing new test that can spot a severe condition endured by millions of women early - and spare them from years of agony
It affects one in ten women, causes severe pain and can reduce the chances of having a child.
And yet it can take years for endometriosis – where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows in other parts of the body – to be diagnosed; some women suffer for almost a decade before it is identified.
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The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Major boost to NHS as robotic surgery will slash stubbornly high waiting lists – but it'll take a decade
ROBOTIC surgery will slash waiting lists in a decade, the head of the NHS will say today. NHS England estimates robotic systems will be used in half a million operations a year by 2035, compared with 70,000 last year. That will include nine out of ten keyhole ops in the gut and pelvis, and increasing numbers of emergency surgeries. Health service boss Sir Jim Mackey will say at an NHS conference today: 'We have pledged to return to shorter elective waiting times by 2029 and we are using every tool at our disposal. 'Robotic surgery will play a huge part in this. 'Not only does it speed up the number of procedures the NHS can do, but it also means better outcomes, faster recoveries and shorter hospital stays.' Waiting lists in England are stubbornly high at 7.4million. The total increased in March as demand soared at a time of staff and cash shortages. Robot-assisted surgery uses super-precise mechanical arms that are electronically controlled by a surgeon and do internal operating work through tiny incisions on the body. They can be used for many common operations including hernia repairs, organ removals, hip and knee replacements and cancer treatment. Patients often have less blood loss, less scarring and need less anaesthetic, helping them recover faster. More than 140 robots are already in use across the UK. The NHS spending watchdog Nice recently approved 11 machines for use in England in the hope it will end a postcode lottery in their use.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
TB: India brought forward its tuberculosis elimination deadline - but can it meet it?
Atul Kumar (name changed) anxiously paced the corridor of a public hospital in India's capital Delhi.A small-appliance mechanic, he was struggling to secure medicines for his 26-year-old daughter who suffers from drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB). Mr Kumar said his daughter needed 22 tablets of Monopas, an antibiotic used for treating TB, every day. "In the past 18 months, I haven't received government-supplied medicine for even two full months," he told BBC Hindi in January, months before India's declared deadline to eliminate the infectious to buy costly drugs from private pharmacies, Mr Kumar was drowning in debt. A week's supply cost 1,400 rupees ($16; £12), more than half his weekly income. After the BBC raised the issue, authorities supplied the medicines Mr Kumar's daughter needed. Federal Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava said that the government usually acts quickly to fix medicine access issues when Kumar's daughter is one of millions of Indians suffering from tuberculosis, a bacterial disease that infects the lungs and is spread when the infected person coughs or home to 27% of the world's tuberculosis cases, sees two TB-related deaths every three minutes. India's TB burden has long been tied to poor case detection, underfunding and erratic drug this grim reality, the country has set an ambitious goal. It aims to eliminate TB by the end of 2025, five years ahead of the global target set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations member as defined by the WHO, means cutting new TB cases by 80% and deaths by 90% compared with 2015 visits to TB centres in Delhi and the eastern state of Odisha revealed troubling gaps in the government's TB Odisha's Khordha district, around 30km (18.6 miles) from state capital Bhubaneshwar, 32-year-old day-labourer Kanhucharan Sahu is struggling to continue his two-year-old daughter's TB treatment, with government medicines unavailable for three months and private ones costing 1,500 rupees a month - an unbearable burden."We can't see her suffer anymore," he says, his voice breaking. "We even thought of abandoning her."At Odisha's local TB office, officials promised to review Sahu's case, but a staffer admitted, "We rarely get the medicines we need, so we ration them." Mr Sahu says he hasn't received the promised 1,000 rupees monthly support from the federal government and at the local TB office, officials admit to chronic shortages, leaving families like his adrift in a failing Routray, who runs the patient support group Sahyog, says medicine shortages are now routine, with government outlets often running dry. "How can we talk about ending TB with such gaps?" she are other hurdles too - for example, changing treatment centres involves navigating complex bureaucracy, a barrier that often leads to missed doses and incomplete care. This poses a major hurdle for India's vast population of migrant a hospital near Khordha, 50-year-old Babu Nayak, a sweeper who was diagnosed with TB in 2023, struggles to continue his treatment. He was regularly forced to travel 100km to his village for medicines as officials insisted he collect them from the original centre where he was diagnosed and first treated. "It became too difficult," he to travel so often, Mr Nayak stopped taking the medication altogether."It was a mistake," he admitted, after contracting TB again last year and being his hospital, no TB specialist was available, highlighting another critical gap in India's fight: a shortage of frontline health BBC shared its findings with the federal health ministry and officials in charge of the TB programme in Delhi and Odisha. There was no response despite repeated reminders.A 2023 parliamentary report showed there were many vacant roles across all levels of the TB programme, affecting diagnosis, treatment and follow-up - especially in rural and underserved vaccines help India triumph over tuberculosis?In 2018, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought forward India's TB elimination target to 2025, he cited the government's intensified efforts as a reason for optimism. Two years later, the Covid pandemic disrupted TB elimination efforts globally, delaying diagnosis, diverting resources and pausing routine services. Medicine shortages, staff constraints and weakened patient monitoring have further widened the gap between ambition and these challenges, India has made some the past decade, the country has reduced its tuberculosis-related mortality. Between 2015 and 2023, TB deaths declined from 28 to 22 per 100,000 people. This figure, however, is still high when compared with the global average which stands at number of reported cases has gone up, which the government credits to its targeted outreach and screening programmes. In 2024, India recorded 2.6 million TB cases, up from 2.5 million in 2023. Federal Health Minister JP Nadda recently touted innovations like handheld X-ray devices as game-changers in expanding testing. But on the ground, the picture is less optimistic."I still see some patients come to me with reports of sputum (phlegm) smear microscopy for TB, a test which has a much lower detection rate as compared to genetic tests," says Dr Lancelot Pinto, a Mumbai-based tests, which includes RT-PCR machines - widely used to diagnose HIV, influenza and most recently, Covid-19 - and Nucleic Acid Amplification Testing, also examine the sputum sample but with greater sensitivity and in a shorter the tests can reveal whether the TB strain is drug-resistant or sensitive, something that microscopic testing can't do, Dr Pinto gap, he adds, stems not just from lack of awareness but from limited access to modern tests."Genetic testing is free at government hospitals but not uniformly available, with only a few states being able to provide it."In May, Modi led a high-level review of India's TB elimination programme, reaffirming the country's commitment to defeating the the official statement notably skipped mention of the 2025 deadline. Instead, it highlighted community-driven strategies - better sanitation, nutrition and social support for TB-affected families - as key to the government has also prioritised better diagnosis, treatment and prevention at the core of its elimination approach mirrors the WHO's view of TB as a "disease of poverty". In its 2024 report, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it "the definitive disease of deprivation", noting how poverty, malnutrition and treatment costs trap patients in a vicious cycle. As India pushes toward its goal of eliminating the disease, deep health and social inequalities remain just six months left until India's self-imposed deadline, new complications have fallout from US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the WHO and suspension of USAID operations has raised concerns about future funding for global TB efforts. Since 1998, USAID has invested more than $140m to help diagnose and treat TB patients in India. However, India's federal health secretary insists there is "no budgetary problem" hope lies on the horizon. Sixteen TB vaccine candidates are currently in development across the world, with the WHO projecting potential availability within five years, pending successful trials.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
US farm agency to allow three more states to bar some items from food aid
WASHINGTON, June 10 (Reuters) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins on Tuesday signed waivers allowing Arkansas, Idaho and Utah to bar participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from using their benefits to buy certain processed foods like soda and candy. The administration of President Donald Trump has encouraged all states to request such waivers as part of its Make America Healthy Again initiative fronted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Rollins had previously signed waivers from Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska to restrict SNAP purchases of soft drinks, energy drinks or candy. "It's about nutrition, and there's no nutrition in these products. We shouldn't be paying for them with taxpayer money," Kennedy told reporters at a press conference alongside Rollins. Additional waivers from Colorado, Kansas, West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Florida and Louisiana are under review, Rollins said. Kennedy and Rollins also reiterated earlier statements that they plan to release an updated version of the nation's dietary guidelines this summer. Rollins said the guidelines will be released "very soon" and emphasize whole, nutritious foods. More than 41 million people receive SNAP benefits, sometimes known as food stamps. The tax and spending bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in May and being considered by the Senate would shrink SNAP enrollment by hiking work requirements to receive the benefits and moving significant costs for the program to states.
