The first home intravenous chemotherapy programme in the Republic for children and adolescents with cancer has had an 85 to 95 per cent uptake from parents and may be adopted elsewhere in Europe.

Consultants’ pay proposals now include a process for the application of incremental credit to starting salaries, which takes account of relevant and appropriate service and will also deal with appeals.

The Department of Health (DoH) is currently in the process of implementing the main recommendations of a Prospectus Strategy Consultants report relating to reorganisation and resources, in consultation with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (DPER), Irish Medical Times reports.

An independent thematic analysis is being conducted by Crowe Horwath of submissions received during the public consultation on the White Paper on Universal Health Insurance (UHI).

The Labour Court has ordered the Alzheimer Society of Ireland to pay four workers it laid off an enhanced redundancy package in line with the provisions of the law, IMT reports.

The total cost for Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) would be €1,386,000, if every pregnant woman in Ireland who smoked availed of NRT for eight weeks, the HSE has said.

Pressure is mounting to include the rotavirus vaccine — as has been recommended by the National Immunisation Advisory Committee of the RCPI — as part of Ireland’s childhood immunisation schedule.

Legal moves are set to reflect a new culture of ‘think, talk and tell’ in relation to end-of-life issues.

Hot on the heels of recent research suggesting the current recommended maximum sodium intake for the population is actually too low and may even be unsafe, a new paper has found that high dietary salt intake may worsen multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms and boost the risk of further neurological deterioration.

Plain packs for tobacco products don’t hurt small retailers, flood the market with very cheap cigarettes, or boost the trade in illicit tobacco, finds research on the early experience of the policy in Australia, and published in the online journal BMJ Open.