Mind & body, in brief

Matthew Hopkins, a director at the NHS Alliance, says up to 20 of England's 155 consultant-led maternity units will have to shut or change role. [1][3]

The NHS Alliance represents most of the NHS trusts that run hospitals in England. [3] A consultant-led unit is one run by obstetricians, the senior doctors who handle difficult births. [1]

The units most at risk deliver 1,500 to 2,000 babies a year, and many are in rural or coastal areas where staff are hardest to find. [1][2]

Hopkins blames two things: too few obstetricians across the NHS, and a sharp rise in caesarean births, which need more staff and more operating theatres. [1]

Caesareans rose from 33% of births in England in 2020 to 45% last year. [3]

MBRRACE-UK, which investigates mothers' deaths, found that some women who died between 2022 and 2024 had their caesarean delayed because no surgeon or theatre was free. [3]

The Royal College of Midwives says families rely on units close to home. [1] The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says there are safer answers to the staff shortage than closing units. [1]

One unit on the Health Service Journal's list of 24 at risk has already stopped births: North Devon District Hospital in Barnstaple, shut since 11 August for lack of senior doctors. [3][6]

Women from north Devon now make a 53-mile trip to Exeter to give birth, and an estimated 194 have done so. [4][1]

The Barnstaple unit stayed shut after a check this month, and its trust is expected to decide this week whether it can reopen. [4][1]

Devon County Council's leader, Julian Brazil, called the Barnstaple closure 'a catastrophic failure of senior management'. [27]

A government taskforce chaired by Yvette Cooper, England's health secretary, will publish a maternity plan before Christmas. [3] Hopkins says hospital bosses fear it will avoid closures because of the political backlash. [1][3]

Why it matters. Watch the Royal Devon trust's decision on Barnstaple this week, and whether the taskforce report before Christmas names units to merge or leaves each trust to decide. [1][3]

Four hospital campaign groups have written to Northern Ireland's Executive, its power-sharing government, asking for a working group on rural health care. [11] They say people in the countryside face long, unsafe trips for emergency care. [11] Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry, which lost its emergency surgery in 2024, could stop delivering babies from 23 November. [11] Its trust cannot recruit consultant obstetricians and plans to move births to Craigavon Area Hospital, about 40 minutes away. [12][13]

Why it matters. Northern Ireland's health minister, Robbie Butler, said in September that no final decision on Daisy Hill had been taken. [12] Kara Finnegan, whose baby needed an emergency caesarean when her placenta came away, says a longer trip would put mothers like her at risk. [13]

More than 120 midwives and maternity staff at Basildon University Hospital in Essex will share 735,000 pounds in compensation. [18] Poor ventilation let nitrous oxide, the gas and air given to women in labour, build up on the ward from 2021 to 2023. [18] Some staff breathed up to 30 times the legal workplace limit. [18] They were not told about test results showing this for 16 months. [18] The Royal College of Midwives says the gas is safe for mothers, and the fault was the ward. [18]

Why it matters. Staff describe headaches, brain fog and low vitamin B12, and the union has written to every NHS trust in England about the risk. [18] The NHS Alliance also blames old maternity buildings for unsafe care. [2]

An internal NHS England impact assessment, seen by the Guardian, says its new ward rules could cause delays and more corridor care, meaning treatment on trolleys in hallways, for trans patients. [14] The rules, published on 15 October, say single-sex wards are used by biological sex, not gender identity. [14] The assessment says trans people may fear being outed, and some may avoid health care altogether. [14] It also lists benefits, including for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. [14]

Why it matters. It warns that hospitals may not have side rooms free, which would put trans patients on wards matching their biological sex. [14] NHS England declined to comment. [14]

New Zealand holds a general election on 7 November. [16] Some 44% of New Zealanders name healthcare as a top concern, second only to the cost of living, says Ipsos, a polling firm. [15] One adult in four says they cannot get to see their family doctor, and record numbers are going to emergency departments. [15] New Zealand's government has hired 54 extra full-time nurses, not the 2,000 it promised. [15] Health minister Simeon Brown says waits for planned operations have improved. [15]

Why it matters. Labour promises three free family-doctor visits and free prescriptions, and National promises 604 million dollars more for medicines. [15] A recent poll put the two main parties level on 28%. [15]

A letter signed by 150 scientists, MPs and campaigners, including Greta Thunberg, asks Prime Minister Andy Burnham for a national inquiry into the unequal harm from air pollution. [17] Research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think tank, found poorer areas of England have dirtier air. [17] It found minority-ethnic groups breathe about 6% more pollution than white groups. [17] Figures gathered by Mums for Lungs, a campaign group, show over 200,000 children in 11 English areas went to hospital with breathing trouble in 2025. [17]

Why it matters. Children are hit hardest because their lungs are still growing and they breathe more air for their size. [17] In the city of Manchester, hospital visits by babies and toddlers rose from 653 in 2023 to 1,072 in 2025. [17]

About 48% of the UK's more than 53,000 deaf children have mild hearing loss or hear with only one ear, says the National Deaf Children's Society, a charity. [19] In its recent survey, only 36% of people agreed this can have a big effect on a child's day. [19] One in five thought it had little or no effect. [19] These children can struggle to pick out one voice from background noise, as in a classroom. [19] Arlo, eight, from Cottingham, was not diagnosed until she was two. [19]

Why it matters. Simple changes, such as a seat near the teacher, help these children follow lessons, the charity says. [19] Its campaign, launched this month, aims to help parents spot the signs. [19]

A team including Amar Sahay at Massachusetts General Hospital found an enzyme that seems to protect memory as mice age. [20] An enzyme is a protein that speeds up a chemical job, and this one breaks down fats; its gene is called Pla2g2f. [20] Mice without the gene had more brain inflammation and nerve damage as they aged. [20] Old mice with extra scored better on memory tests. [20] In donated human brains, the gene was most active in people who stayed sharp despite amyloid, a protein linked to Alzheimer's. [20]

Why it matters. The work appeared on 15 October in Nature Neuroscience, and most of it was done in mice. [20] Timothy Hohman, a brain scientist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved, called it a thoughtful way to find what protects nerve cells. [20]

Researchers led by Rockefeller University in New York used AI to search the medical records of 101,243 people for brown fat. [21] Brown fat is a kind of body fat that burns extra sugar and fat and helps control body temperature. [21] The nearly 8,900 people with visible brown fat were less likely to have type 2 diabetes, heart disease, anxiety or depression. [21] People on blood pressure pills more often had it, and in mice the drug losartan made brown fat burn more energy. [21]

Why it matters. The links do not show that brown fat causes the better health, and the drug's effect has only been seen in mice. [21] The researchers hope to find a way to switch brown fat on in people with normal blood pressure. [21]

About one pregnancy in ten ends in a preterm birth, before 37 weeks. [22] Scientists at the University of California, San Francisco compared blood from 688 women whose babies came early with 1,505 who gave birth on time. [23] Women with early births had more antibodies against their own proteins, and earlier in pregnancy. [22] One attacks IL1RA, the body's own brake on a kind of inflammation that sets off contractions. [22] Injected into pregnant mice, it damaged the placenta. [22]

Why it matters. Preterm birth is the leading cause of death in children under five worldwide. [23] Anakinra, a copy of IL1RA used against arthritis for nearly 20 years, could now be tested, though the antibody turned up in only a fraction of preterm births. [22]

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, treats depression that drugs have not helped by sending magnetic pulses into the brain. [24] Doctors have no evidence-based guide to its settings at each session. [24] Researchers at Mass General Brigham in Boston trained a learning algorithm on the records of 1,609 patients at 19 groups of clinics. [24] When doctors happened to choose what it would have picked, patients improved by about 0.8 more points at the next session, on a standard depression questionnaire. [24]

Why it matters. The study looks back at choices already made, so it shows a link, not proof; the authors project 3.2 extra points if every pick were followed. [24] Its lead author, Jason Gibbons, has a financial interest in a company making online mental health tests. [24]

A study in Pediatric Research measured blood and stool markers in 72 autistic children and gut bacteria in 135 children's stools. [25] Children with stronger autism traits had worse gut symptoms, such as stomach pain and bad-smelling stools. [25] Autistic children had a narrower mix of gut bacteria than other children. [25] But the team found no sign of gut inflammation or a leaky gut wall to explain the symptoms. [25]

Why it matters. Between 31% and 84% of autistic children have significant gut symptoms, which can be hard to spot when a child struggles to describe them. [25] The study measured each child once, so it cannot say which came first. [25]