Donie's daily Irish news BLOG

Man tells Irish court he fears his girlfriend is being forced to go to UK for abortion

   

The Irish High Court was asked today for injunctions preventing the right to travel.

A man has claimed before the Irish High court that he fears his pregnant girlfriend is being brought by her family to the UK against her will to undergo an abortion there.

The man asked the High Court today for injunctions preventing his girlfriend from leaving the jurisdiction for an abortion until it can be ascertained whether she is acting of her own free will.

Ms Justice Mary Laffoy adjourned the case until Friday morning so that the woman can receive legal advice.

The couple, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, are both foreign nationals but have been residing in Ireland.

In an affidavit to the court the man said his girlfriend “is happy to be pregnant” and “never expressed any desire to have an abortion”, but her family is of the view she will be “ruined” if she has a child with a non-white man.

He says her true intentions are that she she had registered with a maternity hospital, and was looking forward to have a CAT scan in the near future. She also went buying baby clothes for the child.

Séamas Ó Tuathail SC, for the man, said his client believed his girlfriend was being forced to undergo an abortion by her parents.

Ms Justice Laffoy this morning granted the man permission to serve notice of his proceedings against his girlfriend aimed at preventing her from leaving the jurisdiction and undergoing an abortion until it can be determined whether she is acting of her own free will.

The judge also directed the Attorney General be made a notice party to the proceedings. However, counsel for the attorney told the court this afternoon that she did not believe she had a role to play in the action.

Among various orders sought, the man wants an injunction restraining his girlfriend’s parents from conveying her out of the jurisdiction until the court it can be ascertained whether she is acting of her own free will.

The man, in asking the court to vindicate the rights of his unborn child, also wants the court to order an urgent investigation to be undertaken by a forensic scientist to ascertain whether she is being brought to the UK against her will before permitting her to leave the country for an abortion. He has no desire to restrain her from travelling should that be her freely held wish, he said.

The couple have known each other for a year but her family have not accepted their relationship, the man claims. He alleges his girlfriend’s family are deeply unhappy with the fact she is in a relationship with someone of non-European origin.

They had moved in together at a location away from her family, who also live here, but were harassed at their home by members of her family. He claims that in recent days she was forced by her family to leave the house they had shared. He also claims a member of his girlfriend’s family threatened to kill him if he attempted to come near her.

A new surgical smart knife that can instantly detect cancer discovered

 

A new knife (above left) that can help surgeons make sure they have removed all the cancerous tissue, doctors say.

An experimental surgical knife can help surgeons make sure they’ve removed all the cancerous tissue, doctors reported Wednesday. Surgeons typically use knives that vaporize tumors as they cut, producing a sharp-smelling smoke. The new knife analyzes the smoke and can instantly signal whether the tissue is cancerous or healthy.Now surgeons have to send the tissue to a lab and wait for the results.

Zoltan Takats of Imperial College London suspected the smoke produced during cancer surgery might contain some important cancer clues. So he designed a “smart” knife hooked up to a refrigerator-sized mass spectrometry device on wheels that analyzes the smoke from cauterizing tissue.

The smoke picked up by the smart knife is compared to a library of smoke “signatures” from cancerous and non-cancerous tissues, information appears on a monitor: green means the tissue is healthy, red means cancerous and yellow means unidentifiable.

To make sure they’ve removed the tumor, surgeons now send samples to a laboratory while the patient remains on the operating table. It can take about 30 minutes to get an answer in the best hospitals, but even then doctors cannot be entirely sure, so they often remove a bit more tissue than they think is strictly necessary. If some cancerous cells remain, patients may need to have another surgery or undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

“(The new knife) looks fabulous,” said Emma King, a head and neck cancer surgeon at Cancer Research U.K., who was not connected to the project. The smoke contains broken-up bits of tumor tissue and “it makes sense to look at it more carefully,” she said.

The new knife and its accompanying machines were made for about £250,000 ($380,486) but scientists said the price tag would likely drop if the technology is commercialized.

The most common treatment for cancers involving solid tumors is removing them in surgery. In the U.K., one in five breast cancer patients who have surgery will need further operations to get rid of the tumor entirely.

Scientists tested the new knife at three hospitals in between 2010 and 2012. Tissue samples were taken from 302 patients to create a database of which kinds of smoke contained cancers including those of the brain, breast, colon, liver, lung and stomach. That was then used to analyze tumors from 91 patients; the smart knife correctly spotted cancer in every case. The study was published Wednesday in the journalScience Translational Medicine. The research was paid for by groups including Imperial College London and the Hungarian government.

At a demonstration in London on Wednesday, doctors used the new knife — which resembles a fat white pen — to slice into slabs of pig’s liver. Within minutes, the room was filled with an acrid-smelling smoke comparable to the fumes that would be produced during surgery on a human patient.

Takats said the knife would eventually be submitted for regulatory approval but that more studies were planned. He added the knife could also be used for other things like identifying tissues with bad blood supply and identifying the types of bacteria present.

Some experts said the technology could help eliminate the guesswork for doctors operating on cancer patients. “Brain cancers are notorious for infiltrating into healthy brain tissue beyond what’s visible to the surgeon,” said Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. “If this can definitively tell doctors whether they’ve removed all the cancerous tissue, it would be very valuable,” he said.

Still, Lichtenfeld said more trials were needed to prove the new knife would actually make a significant difference to patients. Early enthusiasm for new technologies hasn’t always panned out, he said, citing the recent popularity of robotic surgery as an example.

“It expanded very rapidly but is now hitting some bumps along the road,” he said.

Lichtenfeld said it’s unclear whether more widespread use of the smart knife will actually help patients live longer and said studies should also look into whether the tool cuts down on patient’s surgery times, their blood loss and rate of wound infections.

“This is a fascinating science and we need to adopt any technology that works to save patients,” Lichtenfeld said. “But first we have to be sure that it works.”

New Whiskey will bring 25 full-time jobs to the Slane area

 

Alex Mount Charles, the Managing Director of Slane Castle Whiskey.

25 FULL-time jobs will be created at Slane Castle Whiskey following the investment of €12 million in the whiskey distillery and visitors centre.

25 full time jobs will be created at Slane Castle Whiskey following the investment of €12 million in the whiskey distillery and visitors centre.

Planning permission was granted by Meath County Council last week, and it’s hoped construction will begin later this year in the stable yards adjacent to the castle, and is expected to attract up to 50,000 per year.

Launching the project, managing director Alex Mount Charles said the whiskey sector was an ‘excellent growth industry as significant valueis added to the finest raw materials which results in a higher value product for international export’.

‘The country’s economic future will benefit from these emerging, indigenous industries that springboard off Ireland’s superior produce,’ he explained.

The investment and subsequent jobs have been warmly welcomed in the area.

‘This is excellent news,’ said Meath East TD Dominic Hannigan.

‘Irish whiskey is recognised as a brand across the world, indeed suppliers are finding it hard to keep up with demand. I am delighted to see Slane Castle strike to benefit from this and create 25 jobs in the process.

‘In the longer term I have no doubt more jobs will be created in the production process.

‘We have a growing world population and growing consumer class so we can expect the export market for Irish whiskey to continue to increase.’

Deputy Hannigan said the planned visitors centre, which is due to open in the spring of 2015, will be a great addition to the Meath and the Boyne Valley region.

‘I know the centre attached to Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee is a huge attraction bringing in visitors from all over the world. I believe that we can replicate this in Meath and when the Slane Castle Whiskey brand becomes an established success, we can expect to see a sizeable increase in our tourist numbers.’

Irish College of GPs withdraws from HSE clinical programme’s in protest over fee cut’s

 

Government cut fees by 7.5 per on average

The Irish College of General Practitioners (ICGP), the professional body for family doctors, is to withdraw from Government programmes aimed at stramlining the management of many medical conditions in protest at new fee cuts.

It said it would withdraw its GP clinical leads from the HSE clinical care programmes with immediate effect.

ICGP chairwoman Dr Mary Sheehan said the college could “no longer tolerate a situation where it is expected to participate in programmes that seek to transfer workload to GPs while at the same time the Government is undermining GPs and stripping them of their resources with three rounds of cuts”.

“A properly resourced and supported primary care sector will save money and produce better health outcomes. Given the massive health budget over-runs, the ICGP is alarmed that the Government and the Minister appear to be overlooking the opinions of health economics experts by refusing to support GP.”

Earlier this month, Minister for Health James Reillyannounced further cuts in payments to GPs of about 7.5 per cent on average under financial emergency legislation.

The ICGP, which has around 3,500 members, is the representative body for GPs on issues such as education, training and standards in general practice. It has no role in negotiating terms and conditions for GPs.

The trade union representing GPs, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) is facing legal action being taken by the Competition Authority over i ts reaction to the introduction of the fee cuts.

Following an emergency meeting of GPs last week , the IMO said its members would withdraw from primary care teams, community intervention teams and clinical care programmes for chronic diseases. It also said it would pull out of any work not covered under the terms of their contract with the HSE.

The Competition Authority later wrote to the IMO and warned that, in its view, its response to the fee cuts was a breach of competition law.

On Tuesday the Competition Authority said it had filed papers in the High Court seeking a declaration the IMO’s withdrawal of services in response to the fee cuts is prohibited by Irish and European law.

It is also seeking an interlocutory injunction requiring the IMO to retract and rescind its decision, and ordering it not to issue any further decisions with a similar effect.

GPs operating the medical card and other State schemes are not employees of the health service but rather are independent contractors.

The clinical care programmes were established by the HSE to streamline management of many medical conditions, such as mental health, diabetes and asthma. One of the aims of the programmes is to develop more effective shared care of patients between hospitals and GPs, particularly for chronic conditions. The working groups for these programmes include GPs, consultants, nurse-specialists and HSE representatives.

Patients poor care to hypertension drugs may raise stroke risk

  

Patients with high BP who do not adhere to their anti-hypertensive medication are at increased risk for stroke and stroke-related mortality compared with patients who follow their drug regimen, according to findings in a new report.

In the study of more than 73,500 hypertensive patients, those who did not adhere to their medication had a nearly fourfold higher risk for stroke-related mortality in the second year after being prescribed anti-hypertensive medication and a threefold higher risk in the 10th year of medication prescription compared with adherent patients (OR=3.81, 95% CI, 2.85-5.1; OR=3.01; 95% CI, 2.37-3.83, respectively).

Hospitalization due to stroke also was higher among non-adherent patients at 2-year follow-up (OR=2.74; 95% CI, 2.35-3.2) and 10-year follow-up (OR=1.71; 95% CI, 1.49-1.96).

In the year that nonadherent patients died of a stroke, their risk for mortality was 5.7-fold higher (OR=5.68; 95% CI, 5.05-6.39) and risk for hospitalization was 1.9-fold higher (OR=1.87; 95% CI, 1.72-2.03) compared with adherent patients, according to a press release.

Researchers also examined stroke risk based on adherence to specific classes of antihypertensive medication. Among patients assigned drugs that act on the renin-angiotensin system combined with diuretics or beta-blockers, nonadherence was associated with a 7.5-fold higher risk for mortality (OR=7.49; 95% CI, 5.62-9.98) and nearly fourfold higher risk for hospitalization (OR=3.91; 95% CI, 3.23-4.75) in the year that these events occurred vs. patients who took their medications correctly.

According to the researchers, associations between nonadherence and stroke risk followed a dose-response pattern — the poorer the adherence, the greater the risk for mortality and hospitalization due to stroke.

Evidence that degree of nonadherence affected risk was found when researchers examined patients who adhered correctly to their medication more than 80% of the time compared with patients with intermediate (30% to 80%) and poor adherence (<30%).

In the year that a fatal or nonfatal stroke occurred, patients in the intermediate and poor adherence groups had a 1.7-fold and 2.6-fold higher risk for nonfatal stroke and 3.6-fold and eightfold higher risk for fatal stroke, respectively, compared with patients with good adherence, according to the release.

Researchers used nationwide registers in Finland to analyze data on prescriptions, hospital admissions and deaths. They tracked number of prescriptions per year to determine patient adherence to anti-hypertensive medication. Information on patient medication purchases was available from 1995 and the researchers followed patients from 1995 to 2007. During this time, of the 73,527 patients aged 30 years or older, 2,144 died of stroke and 24,560 were admitted to the hospital with a stroke.