This report sets out the responses received to the consultation paper Review of Parts II, V and VI of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. It also states the Government’s intended policy which will be taken forward in the Health and Social Care Bill which has been shaped by the responses to the consultations.
An Act to establish and make provision in connection with a Care Quality Commission; to make provision about health care (including provision about the National Health Service) and about social care; to make provision about reviews and investigations under the Mental Health Act 1983; to establish and make provision in connection with an Office of the Health Professions Adjudicator and make other provision about the regulation of the health care professions; to confer power to modify the regulation of social care workers; to amend the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984; to provide for the payment of a grant to women in connection with pregnancy; to amend the functions of the Health Protection Agency; and for connected purposes.
Key scientists behind World Health Organization advice on stockpiling of pandemic flu drugs had financial ties with companies which stood to profit, an investigation has found. The British Medical Journal says the scientists had openly declared these interests in other publications yet WHO made no mention of the links. It comes as a report from the Council of Europe criticised the lack of transparency around the handling of the swine flu pandemic. A spokesman for WHO said the drug industry did not influence its decisions on swine flu. Guidelines recommending governments stockpile antiviral drugs were issued by WHO in 2004. The advice prompted many countries around the world into buying up large stocks of Tamiflu, made by Roche, and Relenza manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline.
A discovery by British scientists has transformed the fight against the world's deadliest disease. You wait for years for a breakthrough in the battle against malaria, and then two come along in two weeks. But the advance announced yesterday by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge is potentially far more significant than last month's news of an experimental vaccine made by GlaxoSmithKline (and part-funded by Bill Gates), which showed partial success in early clinical trials. Scientists involved in those trials emphasised that the vaccine would only be able to contribute to the control of malaria.