Siberian city declares emergency as dozens die from drinking alcoholic bath tincture

A state of emergency has been declared in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, as at least 48 people were reported dead on Monday from drinking a bath tincture known for its high alcohol content.

The deaths have renewed controversy over the widespread ingestion of “surrogate” alcohol in Russia, including medical ethanol, window cleaner and perfume. Experts estimate that up to 12 million Russians regularly ingest such surrogates.

The deaths in Irkutsk appear to have been caused by a counterfeit batch of Boyaryshnik, a concentrated liquid sold as a relaxant to add to bathwater but widely known as a cheap alcohol substitute. It cost a maximum of 40 roubles (£0.52) per bottle, making it cheaper than even the lowest-cost vodka, and was even put on sale in public vending machines earlier this year.

According to the label, Boyaryshnik contains 93% ethanol, hawthorn extract and lemon oils but tests on the Irkutsk consignment suggested it also contained methanol, an ingredient in antifreeze. Police said they had discovered an underground workshop in the city where bottles of fake Boyaryshnik were being produced, along with counterfeit bottles of well-known vodka brands.

Russia’s investigative committee said it had detained two people on Monday, and seized over two tonnes of the liquid from shops and kiosks around Irkutsk, to ensure no more of the batch reached consumers. Other reports suggested five people had been arrested.

Dmitry Berdnikov, the mayor of Irkutsk, declared a state of emergency in the city on Monday afternoon and also placed a temporary ban on the sale of all liquids containing alcohol not designed for consumption.

The death toll rose steadily throughout the day, with 41 confirmed dead by evening in Irkutsk. A further nine people remained in serious condition in hospital. The local prosecutor’s office said the majority of victims had arrived at hospitals already in a coma.

Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists that the deaths were “a terrible tragedy” and said the Russian president had been informed.

Dmitry Medvedev told a meeting of the cabinet that the deaths were unacceptable. The prime minister said: “We cannot put up with this any longer. We must take all measures either to get this kind of product off the market, or to ensure full control of the way they are sold.”

Medvedev also told the interior minister to ensure people involved in black-market production or sale of such industrial alcohol drinks would face criminal charges, and suggested tightening the law to provide harsher penalties.

Alcoholism remains a major problem in Russia. A survey two years ago showed that a quarter of Russian men died before reaching the age of 55, compared with 7% of men in Britain. The survey found that the average Russian adult drank 20 litres of vodka a year, compared with an average of three litres of spirits a year consumed in Britain.

The ingestion of low-quality surrogate alcohol not meant for human consumption causes even worse health risks. Medical professionals estimate that between 10 and 12 million Russians drink these types of alcohol, including surgical spirit, aftershaves and cleaning fluids, because they cannot afford to buy vodka or other alcoholic drinks. A ministry of health survey in a town close to Moscow earlier this year found that 13% of residents admitted to consuming surrogate alcohol.

“Every year, Boyaryshnik is killing more people than terrorist acts did in the whole history of Russia,” wrote opposition politician Alexei Navalny on Monday. He said people were being pushed into drinking surrogates due to low incomes and said only fighting against poverty could improve the situation.

Oleg Kuznetsov, a Russian toxicology specialist, said deaths from surrogate alcohol ingestion had gone up this year due to the economic crisis. “People are poorer, especially those who drink a lot, but the need for alcohol remains. Before, someone with alcohol dependency would go to the shop and buy the cheapest vodka, now he’ll go and buy something different like window cleaner,” he said.

Siberian city declares emergency as dozens die from drinking alcoholic bath tincture

Revealed: dozens of children still treated on adult psychiatric wards

Dozens of children and young people with mental health problems are still being treated on wards containing adults with sometimes severe psychiatric problems despite ministers having supposedly outlawed the practice in 2010, the Guardian can reveal.

Mental health campaigners condemned the persistence of the problem and said it was “completely unacceptable” for vulnerable minors to be subjected to what many find a “terrifying” experience. The Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb, who was the minister for care, including mental health care, in the coalition government, said putting children on adult wards was “scandalous” and must be ended at once.

Official figures from mental health hospitals collated by NHS Digital, the health service’s statistical arm, show that in July 47 children and young people aged 17 or under were treated on adult psychiatric wards. Of those 21 were aged 17, another 18 were 16-year-olds and the other eight were aged 15 or under. There is particular anxiety that under-16s are still receiving treatment in adult settings as the government made clear six years ago that this should never happen.

Gordon Brown’s Labour administration placed the “age-appropriate environment duty” on NHS mental heath trusts in April 2010 in a bid to end a practice that parents, charities, MPs and the children’s commissioner for England had criticised as unpleasant and traumatising for children.

“The simple truth is that this has to end completely. It’s scandalous that the practice continues. It is unsafe and wrong. There must be a clear and unequivocal commitment from this government to eradicate the practice completely without delay”, said Lamb.

The duty legally obliges managers of mental health units, under section 131A of the Mental Health Act 1983, to ensure that “the patient’s environment in the hospital is suitable having regard to his age (subject to his needs)”. While it allows 16- and 17-year-olds to still be looked after on adult wards occasionally in “exceptional circumstances”, such as if they need to be admitted as an emergency, it forbids totally under-16s ever being treated there.

The figures, which the Guardian requested from NHS Digital, cover January to July this year. A total of 39 under-18s were treated on adult wards in that time, though some may have shown up in the figure for more than one month, NHS Digital said. One hundred and thirty 17-year-olds and 90 children aged 16 were also treated during that time. If the same trend is maintained in the rest of the year that would result in a total of 446 under-18s being treated there, which would the highest for many years. A total of 391 children were treated in such wards in 2014-15.

Under-18s spent 1,938 days on adult mental health wards between them during April and June, almost double the 1,102 days they spent there from January to March. Most of those occurred in the north of England, which saw such bed days soar from 35 in the first three months of the year to a massive 1,405 in the second quarter. In that same period there were 225 such bed days in the Midlands and East of England (down 650 the previous quarter), 185 in London (down from 220) and 125 in the south of England (down from 195), NHS Digital’s data show.

Responding to the figures, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said the number of children in psychiatric wards had fallen by 60% since 2010 and such places should be used rarely. He is set to make a major speech on children’s mental health care on Tuesday, weeks after condemning adolescent and child mental health services as the NHS’s most glaring area of failure to meet need.

“However, this type of care should be an absolute last resort, once all other avenues have been exhausted,” Hunt said. “But to help ease demand, we recently opened 50 new beds, increasing the total number to the highest there has ever been.” Those 50 took the NHS’s supply of beds in children and young people’s mental health services up to 1,442, though the continued use of adult wards suggests that is not enough.

Sarah Brennan, the chief executive of the charity Young Minds, said: “It’s completely unacceptable that vulnerable children are still being treated on adult mental health wards, six years after the government changed the law to stop this from happening. Young people often find it terrifying to be placed alongside much older patients, and say that it adds to their distress rather than helping them.”

Meanwhile, new research to be released on Monday reveals huge frustration among parents of children and young people with mental health conditions at the difficulty of obtaining help for them.

Two-thirds (66%) of such parents surveyed by Young Minds complained that their child had to wait a long time to get treatment, and almost half (49%) said no one believed them when they first raised concerns about their offspring’s mental welfare.

Two in five (41%) of the 316 parents said thresholds for accessing treatment were too high, which meant their child was deemed not ill enough to warrant NHS care, while 36% had paid a private counsellor, psychologist or other therapist to help their child because NHS care was unavailable.

“Not only are many thousands of young people suffering with mental health problems but their parents are suffering too. They feel helpless, unheard and are desperate to help their young people but don’t have the knowledge or tools”, said Emma Rigby, chief executive of the Association for Young People’s Health.

Revealed: dozens of children still treated on adult psychiatric wards

Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change sickens dozens in Arctic Circle

A 12-year-old boy in the far north of Russia has died in an outbreak of anthrax that experts believe was triggered when unusually warm weather caused the release of the bacteria.

The boy was one of 72 nomadic herders, including 41 children, hospitalised in the town of Salekhard in the Arctic Circle, after reindeer began dying en masse from anthrax.

Five adults and two other children have been diagnosed with the disease, which is known as “Siberian plague” in Russian and was last seen in the region in 1941.

More than 2,300 reindeer have died, and at least 63 people have been evacuated from a quarantine area around the site of the outbreak.

“We literally fought for the life of each person, but the infection showed its cunning,” Yamal governor Dmitry Kobylkin told Interfax news agency. “It returned after 75 years and took the life of a child.”

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Tabloid LifeNews reported that the boy’s grandmother died of anthrax at a nomad camp last week.

Authorities said the outbreak was linked to climate change. For the past month, the region has been experiencing abnormally high temperatures that have reached 95 degrees fahrenheit.

Anthrax spores can survive in frozen human and animal remains for hundreds of years, waiting to be released by a thaw, according to Alexei Kokorin, head of WWF Russia’s climate and energy programme.

“Such anomalous heat is rare for Yamal, and that’s probably a manifestation of climate change,” he said.

Average temperatures in Russia have increased by 0.43C in the past 10 years, but the rise has been more pronounced in areas of the far north. The warmer climate has begun thawing the permafrost soil that covers much of Russia, including cemeteries and animal burial grounds. Thawing permafrost has also led to greater erosion of river banks where nomads often buried their dead, Kokorin said.

“They didn’t bury deep because it’s hard to dig deep in permafrost,” he explained.

According to custom, the Nenets tribe often inters its dead in a wooden coffin on open ground.

Related: Scientists climb to bottom of Siberian sinkhole – in pictures

The disease from thawing human and animal remains can get into ground water that people then drink. The boy in Salekhard died from the intestinal form of the disease, which typically results in fever, stomach pain, diarrhea and vomiting.

Other reports said a local cemetery was suspected, or infected venison.

Three unusual sinkholes were discovered on the Yamal peninsula in 2014, a phenomenon that many scientists also tied to climate change. Thawing permafrost could have allowed gas in the ground to explode, they said.

This summer, researchers have filmed grassy ground on an island off the Yamal peninsula that appeared to bounce under their feet. The phenomenon was likely caused by “bubbles” of methane and carbon dioxide, they said.

Anthrax outbreak triggered by climate change sickens dozens in Arctic Circle

Dozens of NHS executives face tax inquiry into off-payroll earnings

“The principles I brought in two years ago make clear that the place folks have failed to give satisfactory assurance of their tax affairs, their particulars have to be passed to HMRC.”

The rules were launched right after it emerged that Ed Lester, the head of the Student Loans Company was becoming paid via a personal support company, conserving up to £40,000 a 12 months in tax.

It followed a Treasury investigation which found 2,400 public sector personnel employing the “opaque” instruments for up to a decade, which, the Treasury said “created the conditions where tax avoidance could be taking place”.

Working earnings through a personalized services business implies the firm pays corporation tax – as low as twenty per cent – rather than individual revenue tax at up to 45 per cent, plus nationwide insurance coverage.

All costs can be deducted from earnings just before profits are calculated, and many men and women make use of their companion in a “secretarial” part. The personal can also minimise their tax bill more by leaving “profits” in the company, paying themselves in modest dividends.

Underneath the crackdown, any public sector worker earning a lot more than £58,200 and employed for a lot more than six months by way of a service business must give their employer assurances they are not securing an undue tax advantage.

Mr Alexander produced clear that most public sector workers should be place on the payroll. He decided it would be excessive to ban the use of the businesses altogether.

However, an investigation by Keep track of, the well being watchdog, ordered by the Treasury, final week unveiled that thirty NHS Trusts are nonetheless breaching those principles.

It discovered 86 senior executives on service contracts, operating in 21 various trusts, had been asked to offer assurance about their tax situation but individuals assurances had not been offered.

Their positions and employers have not been exposed by Monitor for information safety motives.

If HMRC finds the 86 had been utilizing service firms solely to minimise their tax payments, it can reclaim all the revenue tax and national insurance contributions owed with curiosity.

Further fines of up to 100 per cent can be imposed if the executive has deliberately beneath-paid tax or attempted to conceal earnings.

In addition, Check discovered 47 senior executives, doing work across 23 trusts, are on support contracts despite obtaining positions of “significant fiscal responsibility” or getting on the board.

Treasury principles allow this kind of appointments only in outstanding conditions, and has issued severe fines to government departments in breach of the rules.

They include three NHS believe in chief executives, 4 non-executive board members and 15 other board members.

The worst offender was Heatherwood and Wexham Park hospitals basis trust, with eight of the highest ranking personnel paid off-books. Most of them are operating on “transformational projects” with “limited daily life span”, the believe in stated.

Other trusts in breach of the principles incorporate Milton Keynes, with five prime executives off payroll. The appointments are all due to come to an finish.

At the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn, four board members have been paid by way of service businesses. The trust is in specific measures and board members have been set up as an interim team.

Amid an more and more uncompromising stance from Mr Alexander against suspected public sector tax dodging, final week Mr Alexander imposed a record £1.03 million fine on the Land Registry following it was identified to make use of a single board member off-payroll for more than 6 months.

Mr Alexander wrote to Vince Cable, the enterprise secretary responsible for agency, to request what further action he will consider “to hold the Land Registry to account.”

In March the Department for Surroundings &amp Rural Affairs (DEFRA) acquired a fine of £102,080 for a breach of off-payroll principles at the government’s veterinary laboratories. The Division for Transport was hit with a £400,000 fine in excess of two senior appointments at the Immediately Operated Railway, the agency that runs the East Coast railway franchise.

Dozens of NHS executives face tax inquiry into off-payroll earnings

Deaths of four premature infants and burns in dozens more linked to antiseptic, says regulator

It comes soon after 22 infants across the country have been poisoned with contaminated intravenous feeds which was linked to the death of nine-day-previous Yousef Al-Kharboush.

The latest alert has been issued in response to the death of a child in America adhere to the use of the antiseptic solution.

Premature babies have very thin delicate skin creating them a lot more vulnerable.

The resolution is vital to make certain the location is completely free of charge of bacteria that could cause fatal infections.

For this purpose medical professionals have been recommended to use it meticulously rather than to quit employing it altogether.

Healthcare specialists have been told to use the minimum volume of chlorhexidine solution needed and not to let the answer to pool on the skin, a spokesman for the MHRA explained.

It is also recommended to eliminate any extra solution and any soaked materials, drapes, or gowns from the skin, he stated.

Dr Martin Ward Platt, a spokesman for the Royal School of Paediatrics and Child Well being and a neonatologist in Newcastle, mentioned most employees know to use the solution meticulously but the major risk occurs with new junior doctors functioning in neonatal intensive care for the initial time or employing financial institution nurses who are not entirely qualified in paediatrics.

The danger occurs when the remedy soaks into nappies, sheets or other resources the infant may be lying on. The prolonged contact with the skin leads to a unpleasant burn up which itself is then at risk of turning out to be infected.

The bulk of infants born before thirty weeks will have a tube inserted by way of the naval to give feeds, medicines and take blood samples, he stated.

It is 1 of the first procedures carried out in the ‘golden hour’ right after birth, he extra.

Dr Ward Platt mentioned: “This stuff should be harmless, if harm is induced it is very likely to be a education or understanding issue. This is avoiable and a harm these infants should not be at threat of.

“We are very, really concerned about the likelihood of introducing infection, we definitely want to get the skin disinfected.

“But factors that are potent enoug to destroy bugs are potentially potent enough to destroy skin cells.

“You can slop this stuff on a little one or adult and it won’t matter. You do not have that latitude in premature babies.

“Nobody’s baby must come to harm due to the fact of this.”

Dr June Raine, director of MHRA’s Vigilance and Threat Management of Medicines Division explained: ”Hospital use of chlorhexidine has a crucial function in avoiding infection in premature infants, which is a major trigger of death in neonatal units, and is utilised securely several thousands of occasions every single yr in hospitals.

“Our monthly bulletin, Drug Safety Update, consists of data on a modest variety of historic reports of severe sideeffects, which includes 4 suspected deaths, in premature infants connected with the use of this merchandise. Two of these were thought to be due to severe complications of prematurity.

“We have also given advice to well being care experts to use the minimum resolution needed and to take away any excess bearing in mind the danger in really preterm infants”

The MHRA had acquired 13 reports of injury following the use of chlorhexidine remedy in infants in the United kingdom, the most recent one recorded final 12 months.

A search of the health-related literature found a more sixteen, which could include worldwide situations and the latest one recorded was earlier this 12 months.

All the reviews related to infants born at 32 weeks gestation or earlier, at least eight weeks premature.

The first recorded death in Britain occurred in 2005 when a premature child died of kidney failure.

Yet another infant died in 2010 from chronic lung illness and the results of currently being born premature.

A third child died later on in 2010 with no a lead to of death provided.

Chlorhexidine is believed to have contributed to the deaths.

The fourth death occurred in America and the information had been published in a health-related journal in February.

Deaths of four premature infants and burns in dozens more linked to antiseptic, says regulator