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A new scheme being launched with a pilot project in Essex will see dieters paid a pound for every pound they manage to lose in weight. Following the example of a similar, successful American scheme, health officials have decided to give those taking part in the scheme £1 shopping vouchers to encourage weight loss and sticking to an exercise program.

The pilot is set to begin in September and will involve 100 volunteers who have been invited to take part. NHS South West Essex will fund it and it will be run by Basildon Council, as part of an ongoing drive to reduce obesity in the area. A quarter of the area’s population is obese and they have been ranked as having markedly worse obesity levels compared with the national average.

Participants in the scheme will receive advice on how to live healthily and will be required to return every three months for a weigh-in.  It is hoped that the programme will be better value for money than current schemes, which has seen the primary health care trust pay for gym memberships that are rarely used.

The programme will culminate with a glamorous photo shoot, allowing the participants to appreciate the difference that their weight loss has made. 

It is hoped that if the Essex pilot is successful then other primary health care trusts will also adopt it.

The chief medical officer for the government, Sir Liam Donaldson, has warned the public not to panic-buy anti-viral drugs to treat swine flu on the internet. As well as reminding the population that the NHS has stockpiled large amounts of the drug Tamiflu, he warned that many companies were selling counterfeit versions of the medication.

The instructions come as the government admitted that the virus was no longer containable. It is now expected that within a month as many as 100,000 new cases could be diagnosed each day. Andy Burnham, the health secretary, said the NHS had now moved to ‘treatment phase’ in dealing with the pandemic. This means that schools will no longer close as a matter of course when a case is diagnosed and anti-viral medications will not routinely be given as a preventative measure when someone comes into contact with the virus.

Some experts have predicted that this will lead people to seek the medication from online pharmacies. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s Director of Policy David Pruce warned that internet sites could be based anywhere in the world and added that counterfeiters had become so good at copying the medication it was impossible to tell the fakes from the real thing.

As a guideline, Tamiflu and Relenza are both prescription-only medications. You should only be able to buy the drugs with a prescription, and if online clinics claim that they can provide you with this, check the registration details of the prescribing doctor. Then check that the pharmacy is registered with the Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

Further proof of the potential for other uses of the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra came this week when it emerged that the medication saved the life of a baby who was given just weeks to live.

Alfie Oliver was diagnosed with narrow blood vessels around his lungs after he was born and at just a few days old underwent a series of dangerous heart operations to repair the condition. After he suffered a heart attack, his doctors believed there was nothing more to be done to save his life.

The baby was diagnosed with two different conditions, transposition of the great arteries – meaning that his pulmonary artery and aorta were in reversed positions – and pulmonary hypertension. At sixteen days, he was operated on to reverse the position of the arteries but despite a promising start was readmitted to hospital.

Hope came when Great Ormond Street doctors heard about his prognosis and suggested that doses of Viagra might open up his narrow vessels and improve his circulation. The treatment worked, and now Alfie has reached his 1^st birthday, a milestone his parents and family thought they would not ge to see.

The medication has been particularly successful as due to his age, Alfie has experienced none of the side effects usually associated with the drug.

Previous studies have already shown that Viagra can relieve pulmonary hypertension in newborns and may be particularly useful in developing countries, which cannot afford the more expensive drugs usually used to treat the condition.

Further weight has been added to calls to make statin prescriptions more widespread after a study was published confirming that they do make the risk of a heart attack less likely, even in healthy individuals.

The researchers from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam have published a study in the British Medical Journal indicating that after reviewing 10 trials into statins and data about over 70,000 patients, statins will cut mortality – from all causes – by 12% in patients who do not already have heart disease. Users were 30% less likely to have a heart attack and 19% less likely to have a stroke.

There have already  been calls for statins to be prescribed to as many people as possible over 40, the age when heart problems and high cholesterol become more likely. The researchers said in renowned medical publication that statins should be prescribed to people without heart disease but with other risk factors for heart attacks and strokes, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.

They added that it was very likely that many people would benefit from taking statins as long as they were priced reasonably. However they pointed out that identifying people with risk factors would present a challenge and acknowledged that prescribing the medication to all people over a certain age would be difficult in terms of cost and safety.

For all those men worried they may go bald in later life, a new product has hit the market that promises to let them know either way – the ‘baldness calculator’. It sounds improbable, but the program promises to tell users the exact age at which they will start losing their hair.

The program was designed by German scientists due to the high incidence of hair loss in the country, where half the male population suffer from hereditary hair loss. By looking at users age, occupation, hometown, family history and stress levels, the scientists say that they can predict whether there will be hair loss.

So far, half a million German men have made use of the program within 10 days of it being unveiled. Over half of those using it – 60% - have been relatively young men aged between 18 and 30. Dr. Adolf Klenk, who is head of research and development at hair care company Dr Kurt Wolff, is not surprised that many users are young men. He pointed to the fact that at that stage of life, they are socialising a lot and starting to think about finding a long-term partner. As hair loss can cause severe loss of self-confidence, at that stage of life they are particularly concerned that hair loss will make them less attractive.

He added that there were various risk factors that made men more likely to go bald, including a history of hair loss in the mother or father’s family, increased and prolonged stress and a poor diet. He then warned that men who regularly wear headgear, including headsets and helmets, might be pulling their hair out or reducing density.

Dr Kurt Wolff has also created a range of shampoos and hair tonics to combat hair loss, which have gone on sale in the UK. They contain caffeine and after tests on 500 volunteers, showed that the stimulant promoted hair growth.

A study to be published in July’s edition of The Journal of Sexual Medicine has revealed that there has been a significant rise in the number of American doctors prescribing testosterone to combat hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in women.

In a survey sponsored by BioSante, the pharmaceutical company seeking a treatment for female sexual dysfunction, it was revealed that of 2 million prescriptions written for testosterone, 21% of those were for women. 80% of doctors questioned said they believed there was a need for a treatment for HSDD. A further 90% said that they would rather prescribe an approved treatment rather than the off-label therapies currently available.

Testosterone is not yet currently approved as a treatment for HSDD in post-menopausal women in the US although Intrinsa is approved for use in the UK and Europe. BioSante is currently conducting the clinical trials required for FDA approval of an alternative therapy. At the moment there are three trials taking place, two Phase III trials involved 500 patients and lasting 6 months examining the efficacy of the treatment and one Phase III trial to check cardiovascular safety. The testosterone is delivered via a gel named Libigel, which BioSante hope to submit to the FDA for new drug approval in 2011.

In their paper, Dr Michael C Snabes and Stephen M Simes wrote that they believe many doctors are writing prescriptions for women suffering from low desire as an off-label indication. They warned that this practice was contrary to FDA prescribing standards and raised the risk that appropriate doses were not being delivered. They added that the statistics showed that there was a considerable number of women living with low sexual desire, many of whom felt their lives were being severely affected by the condition.

New research has indicated that thousands of Britain in the UK may be unaware they are suffering from high cholesterol caused by an inherited condition. An audit by the Royal College of Physicians has found that many people are not being screened for familial hypercholesterolemia, despite family members having been found to have the condition.

Familiar hypercholesterolaemia causes high levels of the ‘bad’ cholesterol LDL, which can lead to furring of the arteries and therefore heart disease. One estimate suggested that up to 80% of people suffering from this are not being offered the necessary tests. Untreated it can raise the chances of heart disease in men by 50% by the time they are 50, and in women by 30% by the time they are 60.

Across 12 hospitals in England and Wales, the audit found that family members of those diagnosed with the condition were not being tested, though care for those found to have the condition was generally very good. The audit called for improved screening nationwide, with specialist provisions for diagnosing children and young people.

Experts have said that the reason testing is not reaching adequate levels is a lack of NHS funding for DNA testing, as well as not enough nurses and provisions to get families checked out. The condition has been described as a “silent killer” by Dr Mike Knapton of the British Heart Foundation, who said that if tested the 100,000 people living unaware with it could lead normal lives if treated and instructed how to manage it.

When you are dieting, salad seems like the angelic, if maybe less satisfying, option for a meal. Especially when it comes to lunch, when the supermarkets and shops sell pre-packaged options for the health conscious as an alternative to sandwiches or fatty burgers.  However, new research indicates that some salads on the market may be barely healthier than a Big Mac.

In a study of 20 pre-packaged salads, the consumer magazine Which? discovered that on average they contained 20.3 grams of fat, only a small amount less than the fat in a Big Mac, 24 grams. One salad, Morrison’s 300g Smedleys Atlantic Prawn Marie Rose Salad, contained 66.3g of fat and 855 calories, more than a Big Mac and medium fries and nearly 100% of a women’s daily recommended fat allowance. Asda’s Chicken Caesar Pasta Salad was the equivalent of eating 6 Cadbury’s Cream Eggs in terms of fat content.

Which? magazine said that the reason salads were often surprisingly high in calories was that their dressings contained mayonnaise or creamy sauce, in “generous” quantities. They also warned that some salads claimed to contain “no mayonnaise” while containing all the ingredients for mayonnaise.

The magazine has asked food companies to consider adopting one universal label indicating fat, sugar and salt content to make it easier for shoppers to see at a glance exactly what they are eating.

It has been suggested that despite the smoking ban, psychiatric wards have been falling through the loop-hole. The Mental Health Foundation has discovered that only a minority of UK psychiatric facilities have managed to successfully implement the smoking ban.

Of 109 mental health professionals, 85% said that they felt the ban had not been implemented effectively. Many said that it was difficult to stop patients smoking as there were no safe outdoor spaces where patients could smoke, while others said that patients smoked in secret, with staff turning a blind eye, especially when patients were extremely ill. In places where there is an outdoor space, staff said that escorting patients to this area was a drain on resources and staff time.

Staff said that enforcing the ban made them feel uncomfortably like policemen and reported that often they had to deal with patients reacting aggressively when asked to stop smoking. However when patients were allowed to smoke illicitly, the problem of fire hazards due to covert smoking and poorly-disposed cigarette butts arose.

A spokesperson from the mental health charity Mind pointed out that demanding that patients suddenly give up their habit when admitted to a psychiatric facility only compounded the stress and anxiety they would be likely to be experiencing. She said that people with mental health problems were twice as likely to smoke as the general public, so called for facilities to be better equipped to either support patients with quitting or provide them with areas where they could safely smoke.

German health care regulators have warned that the celebrity trend of losing baby fat in the shortest possible amount of time is not only unrealistic but also dangerous. The experts have said that while celebrities are frequently shown in magazines, such as Heat, 6 weeks after the birth of their baby with amazingly flat stomachs, in actuality it takes between 6 months and a year to shed the weight gained during pregnancy.

The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care said that women are being put under too much pressure to lose the weight as soon as they have delivered and are being given an unrealistic image of how long it takes by celebrities such as Victoria Beckham and Heidi Klum, both whom were pictured very shortly after their pregnancies with pre-pregnancy figures.

The director of the Institute, Professor Peter Sawicki, said that women often after giving birth will find that weight naturally “melts away”, due to the calories expended during breastfeeding and while looking after a newborn.

However he warned that women should watch their weight while pregnant, especially if they were already overweight or had a tendency to pile on the pounds.