Health briefing

A round-up of today's other stories in brief

Air mental health issues, voters told

VOTERS WERE urged yesterday to raise their concerns about Ireland's outdated mental health services with election candidates. Orla Barry, director of Mental Health Reform (MHR), formerly the Irish Mental Health Coalition, said: "People who are concerned about the poor quality of services available should raise this issue with election candidates and call on them to commit to reform if elected," she said. One in four Irish people experiences mental health problems at some time in their lives, according to MHR.

Discovery will help cancer patients in the long term

A BREAKTHROUGH by scientists at Queen’s University Belfast, which could improve cancer survival rates, is “significant”, but patients should not expect a new drug to come on the market in the short term, according to one of the research leaders.

Researchers at Queen’s Centre for Vision and Vascular Science sparked a flurry of excitement last week when it emerged that they had identified the key role played by an enzyme in causing life-threatening damage to the heart when a patient receives high doses of a chemotherapy drug. Because of this risk, doctors have in some cases had to restrict chemotherapy doses, thus reducing the treatment’s effectiveness in destroying cancerous tumours.

The Queen’s research team said that having identified the role of the enzyme – NADPH oxidase – scientists can now proceed to make chemotherapy more effective and reduce the toxic effects of cancer treatment on the heart.

Dr David Grieve, joint leader of the Queen’s research team, said the aim was to develop another drug which could be administered alongside chemotherapy, negating the damage done to the heart. “This is quite a big breakthrough but I would not like to suggest that there will be a new drug on the market tomorrow,” said Dr Grieve.

He said he was “cautiously optimistic” that new drugs can be developed to block the action of the enzyme. “Ultimately, this could allow for the safer use of higher doses of chemotherapy drugs and make the treatment more effective against tumours,” he added.

Community initiatives plan to tackle smoking

MORE COMMUNITY initiatives to tackle smoking and a ban on sunbeds for all fair-skinned people will be among the measures proposed by the Irish Cancer Society when it launches its general election advocacy campaign this morning.

For the first time, the society has set out its priorities in advance of a general election as part of its goal to reduce the number of smokers in Ireland from 29 per cent of the population to 20 per cent by 2020.

Society spokeswoman Kathleen O’Meara said Ireland was a world leader in legislation to tackle smoking, but not enough was being done in communities to encourage people to give up the habit.

She cited the success of a campaign in the northeast of England in which “cessation counsellors”, mostly lay people who had given up smoking themselves, were based in deprived communities where levels of smoking were above the national average.

The society will also call for the proposed Public Health (Sunbeds) Bill to be passed into legislation by the new government. The Bill recommends a ban on the use or the sale of sunbeds to those under 18 and a ban on the use of sunbeds by type 1 fair-skinned people, which is the majority of the population.

The society wants the forthcoming bowel screening programme to be extended from those aged 60-69 to people aged 55-74. It is also proposing that the upper age limit on the successful Breastcheck programme be raised from 65 to 69.