Nicola Sturgeon offers help to Northern Irish women seeking abortions

Nicola Sturgeon has told the Scottish parliament that the devolved government would explore the possibility of women from Northern Ireland obtaining terminations in Scotland’s health service for free.

Responding to a question from Green party MSP Patrick Harvie on Thursday, the first minister said: “I am happy to explore with the NHS what the situation is now in terms of the ability of women from Northern Ireland to access safe and legal abortion in NHS Scotland and whether any improvements can be made.

“Like Patrick Harvie, I believe that women should have the right to choose, within the limits that are currently set down in law, and that that right should be defended. When a woman opts to have an abortion – I stress that that is never, ever an easy decision for any woman – the procedure should be available in a safe and legal way.”

The health service has so far refused to pay for abortions for women from Northern Ireland who travel to Britain for terminations. The procedure is only available in Northern Ireland’s hospitals when there is a direct threat to the mother’s life if the pregnancy continues. In all other cases, it is illegal.

Harvie pointed out that women from Northern Ireland had to fund their own private terminations which can cost from £400 to £2,000.

He asked Sturgeon if she would “agree that the national health service in Scotland should be exploring what can be done to ensure that those women are able to access abortion in Scotland, if that is where they choose to travel to, without facing that kind of unacceptable financial barrier?”

The supreme court in London is currently considering an application from a Northern Irish teenager who, as a15-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.

Amnesty International welcomed Sturgeon’s offer. Patrick Corrigan, its Northern Ireland programme director, said: “Given the utter human rights failure of Northern Ireland’s ministers to provide free, safe and legal abortion healthcare for women and girls here, we welcome the commitment of Scotland’s first minister to explore what can be done via NHS Scotland.

“The UN human rights committee recently ruled that Northern Ireland’s laws prohibiting and criminalising abortion constitute a human rights violation. The Scottish government could help lessen the harsh financial impact of that violation by allowing women from Northern Ireland to access abortions free of charge on the NHS.”

Corrigan said Sturgeon’s offer of help should not, however, allow Northern Irish politicians to do nothing on the question of abortion. “While this would be a welcome and helpful step, it is no substitute for the Northern Ireland executive putting its own house in order with respect to significant reform of our scandalous abortion laws,” he said.

“The fact that Scotland’s first minister is now exploring what she can do to help women and girls from Northern Ireland is an indictment of the failure of Northern Ireland own’s first minister, executive colleagues and the assembly.”

Last November, a high court judge ruled that Northern Ireland’s abortion laws violated the rights of women and girls in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities or where a pregnancy was the result of a sexual crime.

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 to liberalising the province’s strict anti-abortion laws across the floor of the Northern Ireland assembly. The 1967 Abortion Act 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 earlier this year.

Nicola Sturgeon offers help to Northern Irish women seeking abortions

New York extends filing deadline for 9/11 rescue workers seeking compensation

New York state has reopened the window for workers and volunteers seeking compensation for lost wages and medical benefits arising from their involvement in the rescue, recovery and clean-up at the World Trade Center after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

A law signed by the Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the attacks that caused the collapse of the twin towers in lower Manhattan, extends the claims filing deadline until 11 September 2018. It lapsed two years ago.

“We still feel the pain and the loss like it was yesterday, and the thousands of brave men and women who stepped up in our darkest hour are still grappling with the after-effects,” Cuomo said at the signing in Manhattan.

The law also authorizes new claims for related injuries and illnesses since the attacks through this year’s anniversary for workers’ compensation, disability and accidental death benefits that were disallowed because of late filing.

This weekend, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at the time of 9/11, former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman, told the Guardian she was sorry for the agency’s advice in the aftermath of the attacks that the air around Ground Zero in New York was safe to breathe.

“Whatever we got wrong, we should acknowledge and people should be helped,” she said, adding that she still “feels awful” about the tragedy and its aftermath.

“I’m very sorry that people are sick,” she said. “I’m very sorry that people are dying and if the EPA and I in any way contributed to that, I’m sorry. We did the very best we could at the time with the knowledge we had.”

Dr Jim Melius, a member of the advocacy group 9/11 Health Watch, said: “Within the next five years we will be at the point where more people have died from World Trade Center-related illnesses than died from the immediate impact of the attacks.”

Almost 3,000 people were killed on 9/11 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon outside Washington, and in the crash of a fourth hijacked airliner in a field in Pennsylvania.

Melius, who is also a doctor at the New York State Laborers Union, an adviser to the White House on worker health and chair of the steering committee overseeing the government health program for 9/11 responders, added: “There are a lot of people who are very, very ill with lung disease who will see at least 10 years taken from their normal life span.

“We are already seeing many more premature deaths occurring, and among younger people, from the cancers. There is going to be a new generation of widows and widowers.”

At the bill signing on Sunday, Sal Turturici, who attended in a wheelchair, said of the extension: “It’s going to help a lot of people who are in harm’s way right now. They’re on the end of losing their benefits because they’re running out of time or running out of any grants or any kind of time to get to extend their pay, so they’re falling off the payroll.”

Turturici’s wife, a fire department paramedic like her husband, said he was diagnosed on 4 October with terminal cancer. Wendi Turturici said Cuomo had given her hope that she can take care of their three young children and give her husband peace.

Thousands of people who aided in the rescue and recovery effort were found to have respiratory ailments and other health problems in the years after the attacks. Cancer has remained the biggest fear for people exposed to the gritty soot at the site.

New York extends filing deadline for 9/11 rescue workers seeking compensation

Volunteer paramedics face street visitors prosecution despite "seeking to do good"

Lady Justice Rafferty, sitting with Mr Justice Jay in London, mentioned she was saddened that medically skilled volunteers “seeking only to do good” had been efficiently constrained.

On Oct 14, 2012, the two men attended an accident at 8.17pm involving a car and motorcycle on the outskirts of Bury.

They recognized themselves to police as Hatzola Quickly Response personnel and have been allowed to give health care care just before an NHS ambulance arrived eight minutes later on.

The two men have been then told they would be reported for utilizing “blues and twos”.

At their original trial, District Judge Richardson was told that the Hatzola crew originated in America about 40 many years ago with the objective of saving lives. It has since spread to Britain.

It aims to give emergency very first help cover in defined locations, such as Salford and components of Bury, mainly but not exclusively for the Jewish neighborhood. In Salford there are 20 Hatzola members, ten of whom are skilled paramedics, such as Mr Issler and Mr Bamberger.

Their typical response time is “under two minutes”, compared with 7 to 10 minutes for NHS ambulances, the court was informed.

Their massive vehicles can carry health-related products, including defibrillators, oxygen and neck braces, as effectively as dressings and some medication.

Judge Richardson stated Hatzola’s 24-hour-a-day care was funded by voluntary contributions from the Jewish neighborhood.

“I discovered Hatzola to be a responsible, devoted and public-spirited organisation with properly-qualified and motivated operatives, of whom the defendants were two,” he stated.

He acquitted each men of the traffic charge, saying their cars had been getting “used for ambulance purposes”.

But the High Court judges ruled on Wednesday that his choice was incorrect. They agreed “with regret” that the appeal must be allowed.

Mr Justice Jay stated road traffic legislation did not supply an exemption for “first responder” voluntary organisations such as Hatzola to escape the restrictions on the use of “blues and twos”.

Edited by Andrew Marszal

Volunteer paramedics face street visitors prosecution despite "seeking to do good"

We need to end seeking for heroes and villains in the NHS

The NHS must not search for heroic leaders to conserve the day, or label staff as villains. Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Select up any newspaper, pay attention to the radio, or observe Television, and it is not tough to uncover but yet another unfavorable NHS story.

Worse nevertheless, we often see a named and blamed villain (or villains) responsible for the reported debacle. The imbalance in between the variety of negative and positive stories about the NHS is stark. So, is this a honest reflection – and are there any potentially damaging consequences?

The NHS spends billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, so there is a very good reason for it to be publicly exposed and held to account for any failings. But why are the majority of publicised stories negative? All also typically good stories are neither published nor promulgated, but the media assert that they are basically giving the public what it wants.

Final yr an Ipsos MORI survey reported that it is the NHS that tends to make folks most proud to be British. This begs a societal query about how a lot a continual barrage of unfavorable NHS stories could injury our emotions about our heritage, our society and our nation. But probably my disquiet is unfounded as, paradoxically, current study undertaken by YouGov for the NHS Alliance identified that over half of adults (53%) mentioned that their feelings about the NHS were no distinct to a yr ago, and that men and women still trust the NHS to appear following them. However, a single in five reported that they trusted the NHS much less than they did a 12 months ago.

In the very same survey, much less than 1 in 10 respondents thought that politicians portray the NHS in a balanced light, although eleven% believed the media’s portrayal to be balanced. It is not surprising that people truly feel baffled.

You could argue that it is proper that there is open and frank criticism of the NHS relating to system failures, as exemplified by the problems faced in emergency care. But it looks unfair when this is not reported alongside the context of austerity, inadequate technological innovation, workforce shortages and a relentless increasing demand on solutions driven by demographic adjustments. It need to come as no surprise that the NHS is overwhelmed.

To solve these seemly intractable problems demands vision and will. This need to be executed through a new type of leadership primarily based on wholehearted collaborative operating.

No single leader or organisation can kind this out. . The troubles the NHS faces today are hugely complex, so to succeed we need to have a complete-program technique defined by mutual trust and respect.

Negative stories in the press – specially when told with the intent of exposing a “villain” – work towards believe in. They damage self confidence in men and women, staff groups and organisations, and develop a culture of fear and defensiveness.

Professor Don Berwick, in his review of patient security, urged us to depart worry, blame, recrimination and demoralisation behind and move forward with power and optimism. Media reports that make sweeping statements blaming callous and uncaring NHS employees threat damaging their sense of wellbeing and value. Consequently, this also affects patient safety and care. We even see instances in which patients are portrayed as the villains – becoming accused of abusing or overusing companies or referred to as “bed blockers”.

Fantastic healthcare organisations across the globe – no matter whether in the personal or public sector – realize the rewards of producing a trusting surroundings which values and supports personnel and actively listens to – and acts on – employees and patient suggestions. NHS personnel know this as well. Throughout a current Healthcare Professionals Network on the internet debate about personnel engagement, Roger Kline, the director of Patients Initial, put it nicely when he mentioned that “if concerns raised are acted on, and these raising them are thanked and praised, that sets an illustration, a mood, the culture”.

Our challenge is to alter our leadership model to a single of distributive leadership. The NHS have to cease to pursue and appoint single “hero” leaders to save the day. We must show what we want to see in others by personally welcoming and encouraging criticism of ourselves, and creating it safe and normal for workers and individuals to do so.

But if the search for heroes and villains continues it will perpetuate a culture of dependency and worry, putting immense strain on employees – especially those who perform in organisations that are underneath the microscope. A damaging atmosphere diminishes our ability to engage fully in our perform and, eventually, has an effect on workers morale and patient care.

Talking up the NHS is essential. Not due to the fact it can make us feel excellent, but because it provides the NHS a possibility to meet the difficulties it faces. It generates trust, self confidence and discretionary energy, just at the level when it is required.

2014 could be a turning stage for the long term of the NHS as we strategy the up coming election. The NHS Confederation has appealed to all political parties to assist the NHS create the area for modify as element of its 2015 Challenge.

We can all perform our portion by generating positive that for each damaging story we hear about the NHS, we inform two optimistic ones. We must end shying away from the leadership challenge, and resist the temptation to hide behind heroes and villains.

Dr Karen Castille is the NHS Confederation associate director and chair of the urgent and emergency care forum

This post is published by Guardian Specialist. Join the Healthcare Experts Network to acquire normal emails and exclusive provides.

We need to end seeking for heroes and villains in the NHS