Sturgeon confirms Scottish talks on free abortions for Northern Irish women

Nicola Sturgeon has confirmed that the Scottish government is to explore how to allow Northern Irish women to obtain free access to abortions in Scotland’s NHS hospitals.

Scotland’s first minister, during a visit to Dublin on Tuesday, said that the Edinburgh devolved government would hold talks with the Scottish NHS that may enable women from Northern Ireland to have terminations for free on the health service.

Across the UK, the NHS has so far refused to pay for abortions for women from Northern Ireland who travel to Britain. The procedure is only available in Northern Ireland’s hospitals when the pregnancy poses a direct threat to the mother’s life. It is illegal in all other cases.

Last week. Patrick Harvie MSP, the leader of the Green party in the Scottish parliament, said it can cost between £400 and £2,000 for a woman from Northern Ireland to obtain an abortion at a private clinic in Britain.

The supreme court in London is considering an application from a Northern Irish teenager, who, as a 15-year-old, had to go to England to terminate a pregnancy. She is challenging the NHS’s refusal to fund abortions for women from Northern Ireland.

Sturgeon said: “I was asked a question specifically in parliament about the scenario where a woman from Northern Ireland chooses to access an abortion in Scotland and whether they should be charged for that or not.

“Now I said that we would explore that, so we are looking in terms of the process and will discuss with the NHS what would happen now routinely, and whether there are options to change that, to make the process safer for the women concerned.

“My view is that if a woman is going to access an abortion then the important thing is that it is as safe as possible … I am not putting a timescale on it but I will report back to parliament in due course.”

An estimated 2,000 women a year have to raise the money to travel to private English clinics and hospitals from Northern Ireland to have terminations.

However, there is strong opposition from both unionist and nationalist members of the Northern Ireland assembly to liberalising the province’s strict anti-abortion laws. The Abortion Act 1967 was never extended to Northern Ireland and an attempt to ease the law to include cases of fatal foetal abnormalities and pregnancy via sexual crime was rejected this year.

Sturgeon was speaking at an event organised by IBEC, the Irish employers’ organisation, on the second day of her official visit to Ireland. Later on Tuesday she will become the first leader of Scotland to address the Irish parliament when she will deliver a speech in its upper house, the Seanad.

Before her lunchtime speech, Sturgeon said she would press London to retain an open border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and this was central to her discussions with the British government over the impact of Brexit.

“It is absolutely essential to maintain an open border … It is important to emphasise the unique status of Ireland, the peace process and the Good Friday agreement, and keeping an open border. Out of all of the things that we no doubt find disagreements on in terms of Brexit – what does it mean and what paths the UK take – I would hope that something everybody in the UK and also in the European Union can agree on is that there has to be solutions found to avoid some of the implications of Brexit for the island of Ireland,” she said.

She also addressed what she called the “ill will” that exists between London and Brussels since the EU referendum.

Sturgeon said: “I don’t think ill will on this is inevitable but I think it will occur if the UK continues to display the kind of attitude towards this whole situation that it has been doing. But I don’t think ill will is inevitable and that is related to the issue of a plan. If the UK gets itself into a position that is clear, reasonable about what it’s trying to achieve then there may be scope to have a relatively harmonious process that delivers a compromise position.

“There is no plan at present and anyone who tries to suggest otherwise is just indulging in hope over reality. I think Whitehall has been discovering day by day just how complicated the whole situation is. Do I have confidence that there will be a coherent plan? As I say, the jury is out on that and it is still not highly clear to me how the UK gets from where it is now to having a clear consistent plan by the end of March.”

Sturgeon confirms Scottish talks on free abortions for Northern Irish women

Scottish court rejects appeal against minimum alcohol pricing

Scottish judges have rejected an appeal against the Holyrood government’s plans to introduce minimum pricing for alcohol.

The ruling by the court of session in Edinburgh is the latest in a long-running legal battle led by the Scotch Whisky Association after the Scottish parliament voted in favour of minimum pricing in 2012.

Ministers set the minimum price at 50p per unit of alcohol, a measure that would mean whisky could be no cheaper than £14 a bottle.

Last year the European court of justice ruled that the policy was in breach of EU free-trade laws. The European court of justice said the policy could be justified on health grounds under EU law only if it was more proportionate and effective than using general taxation.

However, in a written judgement issued at the court of session on Friday, the three judges ruled that the government’s policy was not illegal. In the judgement, Scotland’s most senior judge, the Lord President Lord Carloway, wrote that the policies didn’t contravene laws set by the ECJ.

Quoting from the judgement issued by the judge who earlier considered the matter, Lord Doherty, Carloway wrote that drinking was important to Scots.

“For many, the consumption of alcohol is a great social lubricant. It’s use in a responsible manner is an important and positive feature in Scottish culture. The general intent, as the Lord Ordinary noted (Opinion para 54) is to ‘get people to build a healthy and sensible relationship with alcohol’; not to stop them drinking altogether or even to drink moderately at all times.”

More details soon …

Scottish court rejects appeal against minimum alcohol pricing

Scottish food standards agency criticised over E coli poisoning case

Scotland’s food standards agency has come under attack after it confirmed it had no samples or test evidence linking a cheese-maker with a food poisoning outbreak that killed a three-year-old girl.

Prof Sir Hugh Pennington, a world authority on the bug blamed for the outbreak, E coli O157, said the information issued by Food Standards Scotland on its investigation had been “a mess”, and had failed to answer basis questions about the case.

“The whole thing is a mess in terms of the public information coming out; from my point of view, I just don’t understand what’s going on,” said Pennington, emeritus professor for bacteriology at Aberdeen university and a former adviser to the UK Food Standards Agency.

He said he was puzzled by the agency’s delay in releasing its report in the outbreak, which ended several weeks ago. “The sooner we see all the data which has been collated which allows the FSS to point the finger, the better it will be for everybody,” he said.

The agency issued an alert in July after it linked an E coli outbreak that had affected 20 people with two batches of Dunsyre Blue, one of the best known brands from an artisan cheese firm in Lanarkshire, Errington Cheese, which has pioneered the use of unpasteurised milk.

The firm withdrew the cheeses from sale in July, but the scare escalated last week after the FSS revealed that a three-year-old girl in Dunbartonshire had died and 11 people were hospitalised after contracting the E coli O157 bug. Prosecutors at the Crown Office are studying a file on the case.

Errington Cheese insisted its repeated testing had found no traces of E coli in any of the cheeses involved, but Food Standards Scotland said last week two batches of Dunsyre cheese “were implicated based on epidemiological evidence”.

Two days later, the company said that withdrawing the cheeses from sale was in “the best interests of consumers to protect them from potential risks to public health”.

However, the agency told the Sunday Herald at the weekend it had no direct proof the cheeses it had named and had banned from sale were to blame. “Tests carried out to date from samples taken by South Lanarkshire council as part of this investigation have not detected the same strain linked to the outbreak,” it said.

It is understood the FSS did not test any samples of the cheese eaten, had no swabs from any restaurant or home or supplier, and was relying instead on a questionnaire of those affected by the outbreak. The FSS would not comment on those elements of its investigation.

The agency said on Saturday its testing of Errington’s cheeses led to a positive finding of E coli O157 on a different product, the firm’s Lanark White brand; although it had not yet established that that cheese had the shiga toxin that makes the bug so dangerous.

The company withdrew its Lanark White from sale, too, on the agency’s instructions but again tried to defend its food hygiene and production standards. In a statement on its website, Errington Cheese said its advisers were unhappy about the testing used by the FSS: those batches of Lanark White had been on sale for three weeks with no reports of ill-health.

The company said in August there had been no E coli detected at all at its factory or in its cheeses since 21 March, either by its own laboratory, the local council or by its customers.

Its six samples of the Dunsyre Blue that was targeted by the FSS had all been clear. From the limited information given to it by the FSS, all the cases occurred in the first two weeks of July, even though the cheese had been on sale for up to nine weeks.

The FSS said on Monday: “Public health is and will continue to be FSS’s priority and any actions will continue to be determined by what is necessary to protect public health and the interests of consumers. As there is an ongoing food safety investigation, we will publish more information when this is necessary to protect public health and provide information to consumers.”

Pennington said it was often directly to directly link a suspect batch of cheese to a poisoning outbreak because an E coli bug may only affect part of each block, and consumers could literally eat the only evidence available.

In some cases, people could pick up the bug from an infected knife without eating the cheese involved. However, without very detailed analysis, such as DNA testing, of each bug detected in every patient to prove a direct link, there could more than one source of the outbreak.

Pennington has not been contacted by the Errington family in this case but gave expert evidence in the company’s defence in 1994 when it was unsuccessfully prosecuted after traces of listeria were found it its Lanark Blue cheese. He said in this case, the Erringtons had a right to see the FSS’s report as soon as possible, so it could understand why its brands had been identified as the source of this outbreak.

But he said the FSS attitude in this case underlined long-standing hostility in Scotland’s public health and food safety sectors towards cheeses made by unpasteurised milk, including the Errington brands. English regulators were more relaxed about unpasteurised milk; Scottish agencies became far more hardline after two major salmonella outbreaks in the 1970s caused a number of fatalities.

Scottish food standards agency criticised over E coli poisoning case

Three Scottish scouts taken care of for meningitis soon after Japan trip

The Scottish well being authorities have contacted about 4,000 British scouts who took part in a jamboree in Japan following 3 from the north of Scotland required therapy for meningitis.

The precautionary letter from Overall health Protection Scotland mentioned whilst the danger of an additional case was very slight, it was sensible to be aware of the signs and symptoms, which incorporate vomiting, serious headache, stiff neck and seizures.

The HPS letter, dated 14 August, mentioned the 3 Scottish scouts were recovering nicely after currently being treated with antibiotics.

Jim McMenamin, a advisor epidemiologist, wrote: “I value this news may possibly lead to some anxiety but please be reassured that as a result far no other cases have been reported from scouts from other elements of the Uk or from other international nations attending the jamboree. The occurrence of this sickness is unusual and the danger of one more case amongst individuals attending the jamboree is quite small.”

Even so, the Associated Press reported that Sweden’s public well being company explained on Monday that one particular Swedish participant was most likely to have contracted the condition at the jamboree, and that two other cases had been below investigation.

An estimated thirty,000 scouts from around the world attended the 12-day event that ended on 8 August in Kirarahama in western Japan, like 4,000 from Britain. The jamboree incorporated a go to to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum as portion of the 70th anniversary of a nuclear bomb being dropped on the city.

In his letter, McMenamin stated not all of indicators and symptoms of meningitis might demonstrate at once, but somebody with the sickness could grow to be really ill. The sickness might progress in excess of one or two days, but can develop really quickly, occasionally in a matter of hrs.

Meningitis, an infection of the meninges (protective membranes that surround the brain and spinal cord), can be caused by bacteria or a virus. It leads to the meninges turning into swollen, which can harm the nerves and brain. The early signs can be like poor flu, but diagnosis in the early phases can be difficult.

McMenamin mentioned laboratory and other data indicated that the chance of infection appeared confined to the little group of scouts in the north of Scotland who attended the jamboree and individuals in households of the 3 confirmed instances.

Three Scottish scouts taken care of for meningitis soon after Japan trip

Scottish independence would damage cancer analysis, Nobel scientist says

“My concern is that it will be challenging to justify employing their cash for research in an independent Scotland.

“This will be a significant difficulty for Scotland and with progress in biomedical analysis, like the remedy of illnesses such as cancer.”

Formerly a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, Sir Paul specialised in the review of cell development and division, and recognized key molecules which management the cycle of cells, possibly paving the way for new cancer therapy.

The discovery led to him currently being named joint winner of the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medication in 2001. He was knighted in 1999 for providers to cell biology and cancer research.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has invited the scientist to provide a speech about research funding in Scotland subsequent month.

He yesterday welcomed Sir Paul’s comments on the independence debate and pointed to figures which he explained show Scotland attracts a disproportionate degree of funding, with £12.forty per head in 2011 against a Uk common of £8.25.

“Scotland could discover itself outdoors the loop, minimize off not just from Uk funding of Scottish study but from Uk-wide collaborative projects and consequently far significantly less able to play what most Scottish individuals will want: the fullest portion feasible in the greatest push Europe has yet noticed to discover greater techniques of treating and curing diseases such as cancer,” Mr Brown said.

But the Scottish Government said current links over research would proceed underneath independence.

A spokesman said: “Scotland has globe class universities producing ground-breaking study, and that will continue in an independent Scotland.

“The Uk at the moment operates as a ‘common study location.’ It is plainly in the curiosity of each Scotland and the rest of the Uk to preserve this with independence – something in line with existing worldwide practice which sees in depth cross-border co-operation on investigation funding.”

Scottish independence would damage cancer analysis, Nobel scientist says

Scottish "no" campaign NHS ad pulled from cinemas right after hospital complains

A Fantastic Ormond Street spokeswoman explained there was really little chance independence would impede Scottish patients becoming taken care of there. Photograph: Getty Images

An anti-independence campaign advert shown in Scottish cinemas by the Vote No Borders group has been pulled soon after a complaint from Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London. The ad, a single of several produced by Vote No Borders, claimed that Scots would uncover it much more difficult to get NHS care at Excellent Ormond Street following independence.

United kingdom ministers and anti-independence campaigns have insisted that independence would make it far more hard for Scottish sufferers to transfer to English NHS hospitals. Great Ormond Street said that in its case, nonetheless, that was incorrect. Vote No Borders took the offending advert down on Thursday, it stated.

The row follows the Guardian’s disclosure that all the UK’s significant cinema chains had banned additional referendum campaign ads from 5 June, after being inundated with complaints from independence supporters towards professional-United kingdom ads from Better Collectively and Vote No Borders.

A Wonderful Ormond Street spokeswoman stated there was quite tiny risk that independence would impede Scottish individuals going there. The hospital was employed routinely by sufferers across Europe and across the globe simply because it had very extremely specialised knowledge, frequently not available abroad.

“Some of our professional remedies are only accessible right here, so we’re probably really diverse from a whole lot of standard NHS hospitals, so we do have arrangements with a lot of countries simply because they don’t have the identical degree of expert care that we can supply sufferers.”

In a statement, the hospital explained: “Great Ormond Street hospital was not consulted about this advertising, and we in no way endorse its messages, or that of any other political campaign group.

“We have contacted the Vote No Borders group to request that the advert is eliminated from cinemas as quickly as achievable.”

Vote No Borders has been asked to comment.

Dr Willie Wilson, a co-founder of the campaign NHS for Yes, said: “This is a new low for the no campaign, who are now lowered to employing sick children to scare individuals into voting no.

“The no campaign have repeatedly produced false claims such as this. It’s now important that they withdraw all off their misleading literature and apologise to Scottish families whom they’ve needlessly distressed.”

Malcolm Offord, a co-founder of Vote No Borders, mentioned that the advert which the hospital objected to was due to end its cinema run on Thursday, but he defended the selection to raise cross-border entry to NHS providers in the quick film.

“Voters are concerned about well being and the services and specialist care that they have had easy accessibility to in the previous,” he explained.

“There is uncertainty in their minds about what will happen. Reciprocal agreements may possibly not be in place or even if they are, it is not particular that the degree or indicates of entry will be the same.”

Offord went on: “Our analysis indicates that Scottish voters want much more details. Much more information requirements to be presented by the government on these nitty gritty issues.People would like to know much more information about how these arrangements will operate and will the entry be the same.”

Scottish "no" campaign NHS ad pulled from cinemas right after hospital complains

Football fans get FFIT through Scottish premiership scheme tackling weight problems | Rachel Pugh

Prison officer Alastair Christie at the summit of the Carn a’Gheoid munro in Scotland, soon after dropping 9 stone through the FFIT scheme. Photograph: Fraser Band

If 26-stone St Johnstone football fan Alastair Christie had been advised 4 many years ago that his passion for his Scottish Premiership team would electrical power him to shed nine stone and to conquer 37 of Scotland’s highest mountains, he would have responded with a option expression from the terraces.

But a scheme run by 13 clubs in the Scottish Specialist Football League has aided Christie and hundreds more overweight, middle-aged, football followers to get in form in accordance to study published this week in health care journal, the Lancet and BMC Public Overall health.

The analysis by Glasgow University on 747 men who went by means of the Football Fans in Training (FFIT) programme found that they lost nine instances as a lot weight as these not on it.

The randomised 12-month examine from June 2011 of a well being programme delivered in a football club setting (perhaps a world first) identified that as properly as losing bodyweight on the twelve-week programme, almost forty% of guys in the examine maintained a excess weight reduction of at least five% of their authentic physique fat a yr later on.

In accordance to the 2011 Scottish overall health survey, just below two-thirds (64.three%) of adults, aged sixteen and above, had been classed as obese or obese. With weight problems linked to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer and other wellness issues, these benefits couldn’t come swiftly adequate for individuals operating in public well being. Guys are notoriously hard to engage in wellness programmes but one particular of the excellent successes of FFIT, in accordance to the analysis, was that it attracted guys from across the socio-economic spectrum.

The formula is basic – organise male-only sessions in Scottish premiership clubs and run it “just like going to the pub but with no the beer”, capitalising on the men’s devotion to their club.

“From what I was – a fantastic, big, heavy, strongman – to currently being able to climb mountains, and play football with my son Blair, is like evening and day,” says Christie, 43, a prison officer, who utilised to gasp climbing the stairs in Perth prison. He heard about the programme from a fellow fan. Club-primarily based recruitment was by way of web sites, in-stadium marketing, and FFIT recruitment staff approaching possibly eligible men on match days. Above the weeks, the 15-robust group at the Perth-primarily based St Johnstone FC turned up in their football shirts to discover about a very good diet plan and how to get fitter, with the help of a coach.

Powerful relationships have been formed that turned into walking groups, 5-a-side teams and Munro-bagging parties.

“For me, it was the banter in between everyone and the coaches that produced it feasible,” says Christie. “It produced coming to FFIT entertaining and not a chore. Performing the programme at McDiarmid Park most absolutely spurred me on to change to a more healthy way of life which I have continued.”

Professor Sally Wyke, a single of the two principal investigators from the University of Glasgow says: “We now have ‘gold standard’ evidence that the FFIT programme can assist men drop weight and preserve it off.” Study will now focus on the 60% who did not keep the bodyweight reduction at the 12-month adhere to-up.

Her team has secured a €6m (£5m) EU grant to produce a equivalent programme in Portugal, the Netherlands and clubs in the English Premier League.

Fellow researcher Cindy Gray is doing work with Sale Sharks, an English expert rugby union club, to see if FFIT can function in a rugby context. She is also exploring an equivalent for females.

The FFIT notion has gone into two Scottish prisons – Perth and Castle Huntly, close to Dundee – as a consequence of Christie’s good results. A PE instructor colleague spotted that the guy known as “Large Al” was approaching half his authentic size and he decided that Al’s secret might do some of the prisoners very good.

Kevin Fenton, national director of health and wellbeing at Public Well being England, is interested in FFIT’s achievement. A quarter of adults in England are obese. “There is expanding proof that physical exercise has a essential role in preventing cancer, coronary heart ailment, variety-2 diabetes and high blood stress as a result obtaining much more men physically lively is essential to enhancing the overall health of the population.”

A note of caution is sounded by professor Jason Holford, chairman elect of the Uk Association for the Study of Obesity, who says: “The football sector itself – and other sports like rugby – need to consider it a stage further and wean themselves off alcohol and junk meals sponsorship, as they did with smoking.”

Football fans get FFIT through Scottish premiership scheme tackling weight problems | Rachel Pugh