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Inside Health

Preventive HIV therapy, Sugar tax, Bowel cancer, Surgery

Inside Health

BBC

Health & Fitness, Science

4.4575 Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2016

⏱️ 29 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The average five-year-old consumes their own body weight in sugar every year in this country - a scary illustration of the scale of the sugar problem. The new sugar tax is supposed to tackle this, but what's the evidence that a tax on sugary drinks alone will make a difference? Dr Margaret McCartney reviews the evidence from other countries, which have also used fiscal measures to nudge their populations into eating a healthy diet.

PrEP - pre-exposure prophylaxis - is the latest advance in the ongoing battle against HIV. Studies show this preventive HIV therapy can reduce the risk of HIV infection by 86%. So the announcement by NHS England that it wasn't its responsibility to commission the drug has been met by shock and disappointment. Sexual Health and HIV consultant, Dr Jake Bayley, tells Mark that PrEP is a game changer in preventing HIV in high risk groups and the news that it won't be rolled out nationally, as expected, means the UK is falling behind in HIV prevention.

"We don't like to talk about our bottoms", Maureen Williams tells Inside Health is one reason why take up of bowel cancer screening across the country is so patchy. Maureen was one of the first people to receive the faecal occult blood test ten years ago as part of the roll out of the bowel cancer screening programme and despite having no symptoms, they found early stage bowel cancer. Ten years later Maureen campaigns for people to complete and return the potentially life-saving test. The clinical head of the Scottish Bowel Cancer Screening Programme talks to Mark about the new, simpler screening test called FIT, the Faecal Immunochemical Test, due to be rolled out in Scotland, and perhaps soon in the rest of the UK as well.

Researchers in Taiwan have concluded that most patients who undergo surgery can start showering 48 hours after an operation - a finding that flies in the face of traditional thinking that scars need to be kept dry and under a dressing for a week or more, before getting wet. Consultant Surgeon Nicholas Markham from North Devon District Hospital details the dramatic changes for patients undergoing surgery, including keyhole surgery, changes in the use of anaesthetic, access to food and water and bed rest.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, you're about to listen to a BBC podcast, and I'm Ed Gamble, host of another BBC podcast,

0:05.4

The Traitors Uncloaked. But my show is available only on BBC Sounds, just like Ellis and John's

0:10.6

Saturday bonus episodes, the Pop Top Ten podcast with Scott Mills and Ryland, and comedy specials

0:16.2

from the likes of Harriet Kemsley, Susie Ruffel and Rommas Shranger Nathan. However, and maybe I'm biased, it's really all about the traitors uncloked.

0:24.3

So for a whole bunch of exclusive scoops and podcasts, listen only on BBC Sounds.

0:29.4

Hello, welcome to this Inside Health podcast, which was first broadcast on the 22nd of March 2016.

0:36.3

Margaret McCartney is with me.

0:41.0

Margaret, we've got an interesting piece coming up on bowel cancer screening,

0:42.9

and in the programme we'll be covering some of the innovations that are being done in Scotland, your home turf.

0:45.7

But I just wondered, have you ever been asked by a patient

0:48.3

how they should go back collecting their sample of stool to send off?

0:52.4

Oh, yes.

0:53.4

Well, I don't know what you explained to them,

0:56.1

but here's a professor explaining how he would do it.

0:59.9

Is it the cling film method or the toilet paper method?

1:03.5

I've been doing this myself for a few years.

1:06.3

And I think the easiest thing to do is just to put layers of toilet paper into the pan

1:11.5

and then have the bowel motion and then enough of it will still be above the level of the water to do that.

1:17.7

And it's a pretty simple thing to do.

1:20.0

And there's proof, if ever it were needed, that we go the extra mile for our podcast listeners.

1:25.2

I hope you enjoy this week's programme.

1:27.0

Coming up today, reducing

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