Major effort needed to make cannabis use less harmful, say scientists

Scientists are calling for a major effort to make cannabis use less harmful as a rising number of countries look to replace long-standing and outright bans on the drug with more relaxed legislation.

A number of countries and US states have softened laws around cannabis use against a backdrop of rising drug potency and an apparent increase in the number of people in treatment for cannabis-related problems.

Researchers at King’s College London and UCL said it was now crucial for health officials to consider measures to reduce the harm from cannabis use. Many of the health risks that users face could be reduced by discouraging people from smoking it with tobacco, and using vapourisers instead.

In regions that have legalised cannabis, health interventions could target the drug through caps that enforce a limit on the strength of cannabis, and higher taxation on the most potent varieties. Tinkering with the chemical composition of cannabis could also make the drug safer without altering the pleasurable effects users want, they add.

Writing in the journal Lancet Psychiatry, Amir Englund and other researchers say that with laws around cannabis rapidly changing, the need to protect users from the most harmful effects has never been greater, while more research is urgently needed to inform fresh drug policies.

It is hard to be sure what varieties of cannabis people use and in what amounts because the data tends to be based only on drugs that are seized by the police. But the best estimates suggest that on the global market, cannabis use has on average doubled in the past four decades. In many countries, including the UK, high potency cannabis now dominates sales on the black market.

In the past eight years, the number of Europeans entering specialist treatment for cannabis-related problems has increased by more than 50%. It is unclear how many people refer themselves for treatment and how many are sent to clinics by the legal system, but the scientists believe the evidence that cannabis can cause harm to some users is strong enough to justify efforts to make it safer.

Several European countries have relaxed their laws around cannabis use, including the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, and in the US eight states have formally legalised recreational use of the drug. Canada is due to follow suit this year. Many other regions now allow the drug to be used for medicinal reasons.

While legalising the drug is expected to cut the costs of cannabis-related crime, it is unlikely to reduce the number of users, the researchers write. “A lot of countries are deciding to change their cannabis policies to more permissive ones and we don’t know whether that will lead to significantly more use and problems, but we do know there are vulnerable groups out there,” said Englund.

The main compounds found in cannabis are THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol) and cannabidiol (CBD). The THC produces the “high” from cannabis, but greater levels of the chemical are also linked to a higher risk of psychosis. There is some evidence that CBD can combat the negative effects of THC, such as poor memory and paranoia, but in high strength cannabis levels of CBD are often minimal.

One option the scientists propose is to boost levels of CBD in high potency cannabis, so that users can get their hit without being at such risk of mental harm.

“We don’t always have the luxury of waiting for a lot of research and we can sometimes use the scant evidence we have to try and make some kind of best case judgment,” said Englund. “We are fairly confident that higher THC levels in cannabis are not a good thing, and it does seem that higher CBD levels in cannabis are protective, at least to some extent.” Later this year, Englund will launch a study funded by the Medical Research Council to test whether different levels of CBD can reduce the harmful effects of THC.

Ian Hamilton, a lecturer in mental health at York University, said the European habit of smoking cannabis with tobacco was the greatest health risk users faced, but this had largely been ignored by public health. He said there was “a real opportunity to minimise such harms by adapting the strategies that have proved to be effective in reducing smoking incidence and prevalence in the general population.”

Major effort needed to make cannabis use less harmful, say scientists

The Guardian view on the NHS: more cash, less dog-whistling needed | Editorial

Another week, another dreadful story about patients suffering at the hands of our increasingly cash-strapped NHS and care system. This time it was Iris Sibley, an 89-year-old woman kept isolated on a hospital ward for six months, despite being well enough to be discharged, because of a failure to find a suitable nursing home place. The result: not just huge financial expense for the NHS, but great human cost in distress and anxiety for Iris and her family.

The NHS’s alarm bells have been trilling furiously for months. Nine out of 10 hospital trusts have experienced overcrowding this winter, and the number of people facing long waits of more than 18 weeks for routine – often pain-relieving – care, has doubled in the last four years. Cynics are deploying the NHS’s current woes to argue the cherished principle at its heart – free care at the point of delivery based not on ability to pay, but on clinical need – makes for inefficient and unsustainable healthcare. Nothing could be further from the truth: one study rated it the top-performing healthcare system out of a group of countries that included Germany, France and Canada, despite costing less per head than all but one in that group.

What we are seeing is the direct result of our health service being starved of the financial resources it needs to maintain existing levels of care to an ageing population. The government has imposed the tightest funding squeeze the NHS has faced in its 70-year history. Little surprise, then, that hospital trusts in England ended the year with a record deficit triple the size of the previous year’s. The NHS’s problems have been compounded by cuts to social care: council spending on social care has fallen by 11% on average since 2010. Less state spending on social care means older people languishing on hospital wards when they are fit to be discharged, at great damage to their physical and mental health, and to NHS finances. More cash is not the only ingredient needed for the delivery of world-class care.

The NHS needs reform and modernisation to respond to changing needs, with more care delivered in the community for people living with long-term conditions, and more specialist acute care delivered in bigger centres. But deliberately depriving the NHS of the resources it needs makes this even more difficult. Local NHS leaders in England have been charged with transforming the delivery of care in their areas over the next five years to make it fit for the future. There are examples of real innovation, such as Manchester’s ambitious efforts to bring together health and social care in one budget. Yet, forced to find immediate savings, the process has inevitably become more about cutting back than about modernisation.

The government’s response has been shameful. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt continues to insist the English NHS has been given the resources it asked for, despite the health select committee pointing out the dodgy financial engineering involved in this claim. Even worse, he has sought to deflect from the funding crisis by launching an offensive against overseas patients, despite the fact that pre-charging them for elective care would raise only a tiny sliver of the NHS’s annual budget. This dog-whistle politics is all the more revolting given the NHS’s reliance on its migrant workforce.

There is a growing consensus our health and care systems urgently need more cash to see them through the next few years. Those calls are not being heard by a prime minister who warily regards the NHS as a bottomless drain on resources, and has prioritised tax cuts for businesses and more affluent families over spending on public services. Yet public affection for the NHS leaves ample room for leeway: back in 2002, Gordon Brown achieved the unthinkable – a popular tax rise – to boost health spending. Recent polling shows more than half of the public would be prepared to pay more tax if it were earmarked for the NHS. Mrs May should take a leaf out of her predecessor’s book.

The Guardian view on the NHS: more cash, less dog-whistling needed | Editorial

Can we stop talking about our bushes now? Feminists are needed elsewhere | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

How political are your pubes? It’s not a question most of us spend much time worrying about, yet when you’re a woman, how you choose to cultivate your lady garden sprouts up as a topic with tedious regularity. In its latest incarnation, the arbiters at Tatler magazine have declared the “freedom bush” back in fashion (those who sneer at the notion of the pudenda being subject to changing aesthetic trends would do well to remember that dark mid-noughties period: the “vajazzle years”). If even the conservative, conventional Sloane is cultivating a full bush then, it’s worth noting, that could indeed hint at a seismic shift in societal norms regarding pubic grooming. But equally, after years and years of the same “debate”, is it not time that feminist coverage in the media was directed elsewhere? In other words, magazine editors, enough already.

We are just emerging from a period that has seen a new generation embrace feminism in a way that the capitalist post-feminists of the 1990s could scarcely have imagined. Much of this has been powerful and positive: the conversation about the importance of sexual consent, for instance, and how it operates within a culture that continues to trivialise rape, has never been louder and more energetic. The fightback against street harassment has been equally inspirational. But at the same time a strand of feminism in the media has spent the last few years concerning itself with issues that many would dismiss as trivial, including pubes, and footwear, and 50 Shades of Grey, not to mention that perennial question that birthed a million op-eds: is Beyoncé a feminist or not?

As a writer, I have been guilty of entering into some of these debates. With an internet media run on opinion, feminist polemic can feel like one of the few journalistic avenues open to the young, aspiring woman writer (critiquing media sexism is how I began my own career, and I am grateful to it, but I have said my piece on women’s magazines). For a long while, talking about the more trivial aspects of the feminist debate – as opposed to, for instance, boring old domestic violence – was the only way to get feminism covered in the mainstream media.

But as time has gone on, the focus on the fluffy – so often to the point where it appears to be given equal billing to more urgent and distressing issues affecting women – has irked me, and other feminists writers, more and more. Perhaps it is because I have been in this game for a while now, and have thus seen the same topics recycled several times over with very little new being said (my friend and colleague Emer O’Toole wrote the definitive piece on female body hair several years ago – what could be left to say about it?). Or perhaps it is because I have grown up a tad in the past five years. But more than either of those two things, I would reason that this is a time when the need for feminism is making itself acutely obvious in all manner of ways. There is so very little to laugh about, to the point where even the notion of a “freedom foof” fails to raise a smile.

Donald Trump, a man with so much obvious contempt for women that it feels almost unbelievable – like watching a fictional dystopia play out on our TV screens – is running for president. Analysis has shown that, if women were excluded and only US men were eligible to vote, Trump would win the election. It is abundantly clear that there are millions of people who would rather have a fascist than a female as leader. We are told that women can achieve anything in this day and age – “so what are you whining about?” being the inevitable subtext. “Look at Hillary,” we are told, to which the inevitable rebuttal is: “Yes, look at Hillary. Look at what she is up against.”

Domestic violence shelters are closing due to funding cuts. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

There are other concerns, of course. The way the previous sexual behaviour of the complainant in the Ched Evans case was pored over during his successful appeal and in court this month has caused widespread dismay. Then there’s the closure of domestic violence shelters – 17% have closed due to funding cuts, 32 of which were specialist services for black and ethnic minority women, and 48% of 167 domestic violence services in England said they were running services without any funding. Two women a week are murdered by their partners or ex-partners, and vulnerable women such as female asylum seekers continue to be abused. There were 99 pregnant women held in Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre last year. Three Serco workers are currently in court over the alleged rape of a Yarl’s Wood detainee. As a recent report noted, the harassment and abuse of young girls in schools is endemic.

I took part in a feminist debate this month, during which the broadcaster Jenni Murray recounted being turned down for a mortgage in the 1970s for no other reason than her gender; another speaker spoke about the murder of her friend at 18 by a boyfriend; and the DJ Clara Amfo expressed her frustration at being unable to articulate her anger about female oppression without being labelled an “angry black woman”. I returned home depressed and tearful. Faced with these sobering facts, is it any wonder, really, that so many people seek refuge in arguing instead about bikini waxes?

I’ve been to enough schools to talk to young women about feminism to know that feminist “fluff” can be an easy way to open a discussion – a “gateway drug” if you will, for those unfamiliar with the topic, or put off or intimidated by the stereotypes surrounding it. It’s important that teenage girls particularly question why it is they feel pressured into certain sexual behaviours. That issue does not go away once you declare that the “full bush” is back. The impact of pornography on the way young people conduct relationships goes way beyond a few wax strips, taking in issues of consent, coercion and abuse, objectification, grooming and revenge porn. It’s all cheerful stuff.

The personal is political, the feminists of the 1970s told us, and this has morphed into a strange kind of choice feminism where women are encouraged to examine their clothing, their footwear, their grooming, their behaviour, every little choice that they make, in order to assess whether it matches up. But the big picture is now so alarmingly vivid that it obscures these trivial questions. Freedom is never so easy to imagine as when it might be taken away. Most women know that our bushes have very little to do with it.

Can we stop talking about our bushes now? Feminists are needed elsewhere | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

HIV property-exams ban lifted but patience needed for an accurate consequence

HIV professionals have welcomed the lifting of a restriction on the sale of HIV property-exams in Australia, but say there is a danger some men and women may possibly check themselves as well early to get an precise end result.

As component of the government’s aim to significantly reduce HIV infections by 2020, companies of HIV house testing kits can apply to Australia’s drug regulator for approval of their exams and to promote them immediately to consumers.

The well being minister, Peter Dutton, also announced Monday that from July subsequent year, HIV antiretroviral medicines will be available through neighborhood pharmacies, with individuals at present limited to acquiring their treatment options from hospital pharmacies.

There had been far more than 1,200 new HIV infections in Australia last yr, the highest number in two decades. Up to twenty% of people with HIV in Australia are unaware they have it.

A clinical nurse advisor with the HIV and communicable conditions unit at St Vincent’s hospital in Sydney, John McAllister, stated simple access to testing was notably critical for challenging-to-reach groups who may possibly not usually see a medical doctor, such as these in rural places.

Once people knew they had HIV, most modified their behaviour to shield other people by disclosing the issue and employing condoms, he said.

But men and women essential to be conscious it could get up to three months from when very first turning into contaminated until the residence oral-swab exams could detect the infection, he mentioned.

“The danger is a person may well test also early, check negative, and assume they’re Okay when in reality they are not,” he stated.

“People with early undetected HIV infections are very infectious.”

People who believed they had been infected within the previous three months need to see their medical doctor for one of the other sorts of HIV exams accessible instead.

Most folks who get antiretroviral treatments as directed minimize their possibility of transmitting the virus to other people for the duration of unprotected intercourse by up to 96%. It indicates that making certain folks with HIV are conscious they have it, are receiving remedy, and can very easily access medication is crucial to avoiding its spread.

Director of the Institute for Immunology and Infectious Illnesses at Murdoch University in Western Australia, Professor Simon Mallal, explained home HIV testing and accessibility to HIV treatment method at regional pharmacies have been crucial additions to existing prevention approaches, this kind of as condom use.

“We require for it to be as easy as achievable for someone with HIV to select to be examined, see an skilled in HIV care regularly and consider HIV tablets for existence,” he explained.

But it was crucial support be accessible to these testing at home in case the consequence indicated HIV infection, he explained.

“An understandable nervousness around residence testing is that the patient misses out on the pre- and submit-test counselling they would get when tested in a doctor’s office,” Mallal said.

“When folks check at home they might obtain a outcome and not have that specialist guidance about how to interpret it, and they could be left on their personal to grapple with potentially scary information.

“It’s really crucial that individuals are extremely swiftly linked with an skilled who can reassure them that these days, HIV is a manageable disease with the proper therapy.”

It was also critical that individuals verify the test end result with their medical doctor, he stated.

The test is already widely obtainable in the US – the place they sell for about $ forty – and contains info about a 24-hour phone service for support if a positive result is indicated.

HIV property-exams ban lifted but patience needed for an accurate consequence

#Shake4Mike: "I needed to be his rock in return"

“He was nevertheless waiting to hear back from a task interview, so I assumed it was about that and I got truly thrilled,” she says. “I experimented with to ring a number of instances, and ultimately I acquired by means of over fairly a patchy line. He mentioned, ‘I consider I’ve got leukaemia.’ When you hear those words, you know how significant it is. I just advised him, ‘I’m going to get home as rapidly as I can.’ ”

The information that followed was devastating. Mike, 29, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and is at present undergoing intense chemotherapy six occasions a week at Bristol Royal Infirmary. Such is the severity of his situation that medical professionals have stated he requirements a stem-cell transplant to save his lifestyle – and time is working out.

As has been widely reported this week, his family, who live in Somerset, have only until finally the start of July, when his chemotherapy program ends, to find a ideal donor. Normally a third of folks requiring the operation are able to find a sibling match. All of his 3 brothers have presently been examined, but none has been productive.

He and his loved ones are now browsing the Anthony Nolan stem‑cell donor register for a match with a stranger inclined to assist. The charity warns, nonetheless, that it can generally locate a ideal donor for only close to half the individuals who need to have a existence-saving stem-cell transplant.

Kate, as a end result, has taken issues into her personal hands. This week, she launched a public campaign for men and women to signal up to the register, urging social media end users to submit silly movies of themselves shaking their faces from side to side – some thing the couple employed to movie each other carrying out – to encourage the campaign she has called #Shake4Mike.

Her hope, of course, is that much more signatories to the register will enhance her fiancé’s chances of locating a donor – and she has been inundated with responses. “Some have been so funny they’ve produced me laugh out loud.”

Indeed, in conversation, the Nottingham University graduate is strikingly upbeat and resilient. But optimism in the encounter of tragedy is a skill she has previously been forced to master. In 2005, her 59-year-previous father, David, died all of a sudden at the household home in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, following building a blood clot following an operation on a hip he had broken skiing. “He had just eaten his Sunday roast and walked on his crutches to the residing area and died.”

A number of weeks later on, her grandparents followed him. In 2008 her mom, Ali, invited her ideal pal, Simon Blackett, to move in to assist support the family members. Within two months, the 38-year-old suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage.

It was a 12 months soon after this most recent loss that the couple first met. Kate says her fiancé has aided flip her existence about and that, ever since she acquired that mobile phone contact in Burma, she has been established to be his “rock” in return.

Nonetheless, the journey home was in itself adequate to test her emotional strength. She remembers a “horrendous” 48-hour blur of buses and planes. “Mum picked me up straight from Heathrow and drove me to the hospital. I considered when I noticed her I’d break down, but she’s actually strong and that assisted so significantly. When I received to the hospital and noticed him he looked pale, but other than that it was just a relief to be with him,” says Kate.

By then, Mike had previously been in Bristol Royal Infirmary for 3 days, having suffered fatigue and evening sweats in the weeks leading up to his admission. When he at some point visited a medical professional for blood exams, he was told – just 4 hours later – that he had leukaemia.

Mike is now undergoing his 2nd of three phases of chemotherapy. The total course finishes at the end of subsequent month, which is when the stem-cell transplant will be required.

The Anthony Nolan register will not be capable to verify till subsequent week how many men and women have signed up to donate given that Kate launched her on the web campaign. But presently her Facebook web page has attracted one,500 “likes” in just four days – and more will surely follow. Tomorrow, she has been invited into the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London to indicator up donors prior to the final match of the season.

She is evangelical about her result in. “People are often fearful of donating, but the approach, if you are matched with someone, is not dissimilar from offering blood,” she tells me. “It’s incomparable to what Mike’s entire body has to go by means of as the recipient: 3 huge regimes of chemotherapy that ruin all the bone marrow, his immune method, all the cancer cells, plus I don’t know how numerous other cells in his body.”

That undergoing this kind of a process is the greatest case scenario demonstrates what a hard path lies ahead for Mike and his household. None the much less, in accordance to his fiancée, he is in an “amazing” condition. “He’s producing continuous jokes and is in actually excellent spirits. That makes everybody truly feel stronger.”

A new occupation Mike had been provided in March and not but commenced, functioning as an ecology assistant in Banbury, Oxford, is being held for him while he undergoes treatment. The only element of the future he is not speaking about is his wedding ceremony following summer time, the reception for which is to be held in the Robertsons’ backyard.

“Pre-diagnosis he did not get also thrilled speaking about wedding plans anyway,” his fiancée says, “you know what boys are like. I’ve told him that right up until we get previous the transplant, we do not have to mention it.”

Nowadays, significantly less than 60 days continue to be till that transplant is required. Kate chooses not to focus on what that “deadline” could signify, nevertheless.

“I haven’t asked what will take place if he does not get the transplant. My understanding is that if they do give him the transplant they can remedy him. If they do not, the likelihood of relapse is enormous.”

For now, she says, they are just focusing on remaining good – a single day at a time.

To donate to the Anthony Nolan register, go to www.anthonynolan.org

#Shake4Mike: "I needed to be his rock in return"

Action needed on the "sunshine" vitamin

Vitamin deficiency in youngsters is a issue several of us associate with other components of the planet, or other instances in history in Britain. But the reality is that vitamin D deficiency is a critical and developing problem in this country and, a Guardian roundtable was advised, it really is something that requirements to be tackled appropriately, and quickly.

The roundtable heard that, in spite of a phone to action on vitamin D by the chief health-related officer Prof Dame Sally Davies last October, no headway has yet been produced in issuing appropriate suggestions on how to deal with a problem that has led to a 4-fold enhance in the quantity of circumstances of the bone illness rickets in latest many years. Even so, the roundtable – sponsored by Danone Child Nutrition and held underneath the Chatham Property rule below which contributions are reported without attribution to inspire a frank discussion – heard that the method that wants to be adopted is clear, and in several approaches fairly straightforward. But the procedure for modify at government degree has at the moment stalled – while the dilemma is continuing to enhance.

The extent of vitamin D deficiency, the roundtable was advised, is hard to measure – but numerous participants had statistics to share. All around forty% of younger youngsters in Britain now have below the threshold of vitamin D recommended as optimal (“deficiency”) as many as 80% in the population have minimal ranges (“insufficiency”). Most teens are below the optimal level. “What that all implies is – a massive proportion, even the bulk, of the population have vitamin D insufficiency. Which is a very huge difficulty,” said one of the doctors existing. One more participant spoke about recently published information. “A group in Oxford have reviewed 50 years’ well worth of figures, and the graph is going straight up,” he said. “There are problems of definition with this concern, but across the spectrum there is a large difficulty and it really is increasing.”

A single clinician described the reality of rickets, the sharp end of vitamin D deficiency. “I saw a two-12 months-old kid with rickets in my clinic final week,” he stated. “The loved ones had been immigrants from West Africa. Their little one was very little for his age he’d been solely breastfed for two years. He was a profound situation.” Rickets leads to bone tenderness, skeletal deformity like the traditional “bow-leg” result in intense instances, it can lead to convulsions or heart failure. The irony, said the doctor, was that it was not tough to treat. “In this situation, the little one was provided vitamin D and the mothers and fathers were provided dietary tips. He will do actually properly fairly quickly, inside two or three weeks, he’ll be a various kid,” he said.

Current guidance
But one more clinician spoke of the issues of acquiring the correct messages across to some parents. “What is really upsetting is when I see a kid cured, and the mom comes along breastfeeding the up coming baby and no a single has ever told her how crucial it is for her youngster to be taking nutritional vitamins,” he said. Existing advice is for all pregnant and breastfeeding women to take vitamin D supplements, as well as infants and young children aged 6 months to five years. Breastfed babies, nonetheless, might require dietary supplements from one particular month of age if their mother did not get vitamin D throughout pregnancy.

Getting the proper messages across to mothers is critical, the roundtable was informed and it was especially critical to target mothers in some ethnic minority communities. One particular of the main ways the body makes vitamin D is via exposure to sunshine but in some Muslim communities mothers traditionally cover themselves up to the extent that – particularly in a usually sun-starved country like the Uk – they never get sufficient sunshine to make any vitamin D. If they are also breastfeeding, specially lengthy-term, this has serious implications, and the messages on supplementation have to be place across properly. Worries have been also voiced about the recommendation that babies should get supplements from six months, given that families are not routinely noticed at that stage a much better strategy, some speakers believed, would be universal supplementation from two weeks of age, considering that that is a time when infants are noticed by a well being specialist.

An additional issue is the risk-free sun campaign, which some roundtable participants held sturdy views about. Sunshine has a vitamin D health upside but also a skin cancer downside. Getting the stability proper in public wellness messages was seen as vital – and, for some participants, that had not been the case in current years. “The cancer societies have been telling us the incorrect point for a lengthy time,” explained one particular of those round the table. “But we have not had a lead from the government on it. We’ve all heard the slogan ‘there’s no this kind of issue as a healthful tan’. We had been told to keep out of the sun. We all believed that message. So people put on sunscreen, stayed out of the sun, and vitamin D deficiency levels went up.

“Of course we require to keep away from sunburn, but we do need to have to go out as much as we can when the sun is shining. We want to adjust the messages we’re providing out on sunshine.”

However, yet another participant pointed out that exposure to sun alone will not entirely remedy the problem. “Our geographical position signifies that, specifically in the autumn and winter, we just will not have ample sunshine in the Uk to allow us to make vitamin D,” he explained. What is a lot more, individuals with distinct quantities of pigment in their skin need to have distinct amounts of sunshine to make the vitamin: a single piece of investigation found light-skinned folks could make enough vitamin D if they were exposed to thirty minutes of UV light 3 times a week but dark-skinned people would want two hours three instances a week for the same effect.

Supplementation (vitamin drops or pills) and fortification of staple food items (for example, incorporating vitamin D to milk and bread) had been the answer to this, the roundtable heard. One participant pointed out that several other nations did have mandatory fortification of staple meals, and that Britain was unusual in that it did not – the only legal necessity right here is for infant formula, and margarine, to be fortified with vitamin D.

What, then, is the way forward? “We have acquired all the scientific evidence we need to have,” explained a single participant. “We know what to do: fortification, sunshine and dietary supplements.” Yet another contributor described the success of an initiative begun in Birmingham a decade in the past, and given that taken up in some other places of the country. “It was began after one of the principal care trusts with a higher ethnic minority population noticed a resurgence in rickets and made the decision to do anything about it. They convened a group that integrated public well being specialists, GPs, health visitors and pharmacists. They had a major marketing campaign and put across the message, and they made dietary supplements available for youngsters from two weeks of age up to five. Uptake was twenty% and that led to a 59% reduction in the incidence of vitamin D deficiency cases presenting at hospital in that area.” Mention was also made of the Vitamin D Mission, which tackles the concerns online for each mother and father and healthcare specialists.

The common consensus was that the existing messages have been also complicated, and that a clearer, and multi-pronged, strategy needed to be taken. Numerous participants mentioned that the government is at the moment awaiting a report on the vitamin D issue from the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition. But there was a standard sense of frustration that the wait was holding up receiving the right info out to the public.

“We should not be waiting for this report,” stated a single of these round the table. “We do need to have to have the concerns defined, but the basic message is clear and we require to get it out to the public.”

Crucial discussion factors
• Vitamin D deficiency, and insufficiency, is a huge and increasing dilemma in Britain.

• Sunshine is a source of vitamin D, and risk-free sun messages have lowered people’s exposure to the sun, which has impacted on deficiency amounts.

• There are distinct dangers in some ethnic communities: dark-skinned folks need much more sunshine to make vitamin D, and some groups cover up much more and so get less sunshine.

• There are difficulties in excess of getting the right messages out to mothers of infants: little one formula is fortified with vitamin D by law, but breastfed infants want dietary supplements.

• A multi-pronged method is needed to address the concerns in a public health campaign, but the government is dragging its feet and failing to act rapidly.

The Vitamin D Mission aims to raise the awareness of children’s vitamin D requirements. Pay a visit to vitamindmission.co.united kingdom for specifics.

At the table

Paul Arundel
Secretary, British Paediatric and Adolescent Bone Group

Andrew Thomas
Founder and managing director, Far better You

Brian Dow
Director of communications, Royal University of Paediatrics

Leanne Olivier
Senior healthcare affairs manager, Danone Baby Nutrition

Claire Bowring
Health care policy manager, Nationwide Osteoporosis Society

Dr Mitch Blair
Reader in paediatrics and child public well being, Imperial College London

Barbara Evans
Neighborhood nursery nurse, Leicestershire Partnership NHS Believe in

Prof Euan Ross
Emeritus Professor of community paediatrics, King’s University London

Dr Benjamin Jacobs
Clinical advisor for the vitamin D mission, Royal Nationwide Ortho- paedic hospital

Oliver Gillie
Director, Well being Analysis Forum

Dr Nick Shaw
Consultant paediatric endocrinologist, Birmingham Children’s hospital

Credits

Seminar report commissioned and controlled by the Guardian. Discussion hosted to a short agreed with Danone. Funded by Danone. Get in touch with Sunita Gordon on 020 3353 2447 (sunita.gordon@theguardian.com). For information on roundtables, pay a visit to: theguardian.com/sponsored-content material

Action needed on the "sunshine" vitamin