Thousands of cancer patients in England to benefit from new immunotherapy jab

Thousands of patients across England each year will benefit from a new immunotherapy treatment that can be used for several types of cancer, the NHS has announced.The injectable form of pembrolizumab, which can be administered in under two minutes, kills cancer cells by blocking a protein called PD-1, which acts as a brake on immune responses, allowing the immune system to recognise and attack cancer cells.This new form of immunotherapy will replace pembrolizumab, which is administered via an intravenous drip in a specialist clean room. Preparing and administering it can be time-consuming and expensive for NHS staff to maintain, taking about two hours per session for patient.Most of the 14,000 patients already taking pembrolizumab are expected to benefit from the new injectable version

Lorraine Ribbons obituary

My wife, Lorraine Ribbons, who has died aged 72, worked for many years as a volunteer for the Association of Children with Heart Disorders (ACHD), visiting young people with heart conditions in hospitals, arranging for them to go on holidays and providing support.Two of her three children were born with heart conditions and that led her into volunteering from the late 1970s onwards, befriending and counselling other families in the same situation.A trained nurse, through the auspices of the ACHD she gained access to the cardiac wards of Edinburgh Sick Children’s hospital and was encouraged by the consultants there to roam around providing emotional and practical help.She also took it upon herself to arrange holidays and weekend breaks, setting up accommodation in the countryside, where they would take part in activities such as pony riding and archery.The holidays were often transformative for the youngsters, giving them a chance to be apart from their parents and to get up to the kind of high-spirited stuff that all teenagers like to be involved with – without someone breathing down their necks saying: “You can’t do that

One in three HR leaders face opposition to inclusion schemes, study finds

More than a third of HR decision-makers in the UK said they have faced pushback against equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiatives over the past year, according to new research.The new YouGov poll, carried out for the national employment charity Working Chance, surveyed 565 HR decision-makers and found that resistance towards EDI was on the rise.The findings raised concerns about the impact on people with convictions, who often rely on inclusive hiring practices to access work.Working Chance, which supports women with convictions into employment, warned that scaling back inclusive hiring risked entrenching social exclusion and undermining efforts to reduce reoffending.Evidence consistently shows that stable employment is one of the most effective ways of preventing people from returning to the criminal justice system, the charity said

Welcome to Anxietyland: I used alcohol to hide my fear – but booze became a very bad friend

In 2018, I was in my 30s and living in Oakland, California, having moved there from the UK in 2015. I had always struggled with anxiety and panic attacks, but I was doing fairly well – until suddenly I wasn’t. I started having back-to-back panic attacks, wandering the streets of Oakland and nearby Berkeley in a desperate attempt to shake them, without success.My life felt like an out-of-control fairground ride. Actually, it felt more like an entire theme park

UN warns women in public life face increasingly sophisticated online violence

Women in public life are facing growing and increasingly sophisticated forms of online violence, the UN has said, warning that “AI-assisted ‘virtual rape’ is now at the fingertips of perpetrators”.Female rights campaigners, journalists and other public communicators face a deepening threat owing to a combination of artificial intelligence, anonymity and the absence of effective laws and accountability, a report published by UN Women found.Of more than 600 women in public life, 6% said they had been victims of deepfakes, while nearly a third said they had received unsolicited sexual advances online. About 12% said they had had images of themselves shared without their consent, including intimate or sexual content.“Artificial intelligence is making abuse easier and more damaging,” said Kalliopi Mingeirou, who leads UN Women’s efforts to end violence against women

‘I am invoking Martha’s rule’: how a woman saved her father from near death in hospital

For six awful days last summer, as her father, David, got progressively sicker in the cardiac ward of the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, Karen Osenton would read the poster above his bed telling patients about their right under Martha’s rule to ask for a second opinion.Her father, a retired engineer in his early 70s who was normally extremely fit, was by then thin, jaundiced and could barely lift his head from the pillow. But his bed was right beside the nurses’ station, surely they would notice if he needed more urgent treatment?David had first gone to his GP more than a month earlier complaining of extreme breathlessness, and over the following weeks he had become increasingly thin and weak with suspected heart failure. But it had taken repeated visits to the accident and emergency ward, being sent home each time, before he was finally given a bed in a specialist cardiac unit last July.“Every day we saw him he got worse,” says Karen, a teacher from Aynho, in West Northamptonshire