Getty ImagesThe focus on puberty blockers in the gender-care debate is disproportionate, the paediatrician who led the NHS review into children’s services, says.

Officials are looking to foreign sources to ease shortages of IV bags caused by Hurricane Helene as hospitals begin rationing fluids to protect the sickest patients.U.S. officials are racing to approve airlifts of IV fluids from overseas manufacturing plants to ease shortages caused by Hurricane Helene that have forced hospitals to begin postponing surgeries as a way to ration supplies for the most fragile patients.The current shortage occurred when flooding coursed through western North Carolina and damaged a Baxter plant, which is now closed for cleaning. The plant makes about 60 percent of the United States’ supply of fluids used in IVs, for in-home dialysis and for people who rely on IV nutrition. They include premature babies in intensive care and patients who rely on tube feeding to survive.The situation could become even more dire now that Hurricane Milton is bearing down on Florida. On Tuesday, workers at B. Braun, makers of a fourth of the nation’s IV fluids, loaded trucks at the company’s plant in Daytona Beach with the medical bags and drove them north through the night to what they hoped would be a safer location.The Baxter plant, in Marion, N.C., and the B. Braun site in Daytona Beach manufacture about 85 percent of the nation’s supply of IV fluids. Experts on shortages have long pointed out the risk of such over-concentration of critical supplies, citing exposure to disasters like those now at hand. Even before the latest storm, supplies were tight and reflected a longstanding problem of how few companies are willing to produce crucial but low-cost and low-profit supplies.A spokeswoman for the B. Braun site in Florida said that the company was working with federal officials and that the plant’s staff would be off work Wednesday and planned to return on Friday once the hurricane had moved on.The supply crunch from flooding at the Baxter plant has led the company to limit hospital customers to 40 to 60 percent of their typical supplies this week. The American Hospital Association wrote to President Biden on Monday, seeking assistance to alleviate concerns about “substantial shortages of these lifesaving and life-supporting products.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Concerned about anxiety and depression among students, some schools are monitoring what children type into their devices to detect suicidal thinking or self-harm.In response to the youth mental health crisis, many school districts are investing in software that monitors what students type on their school devices, alerting counselors if a child appears to be contemplating suicide or self-harm.Such tools — produced by companies like Gaggle, GoGuardian Beacon, Bark and Securly — can pick up what a child types into a Google search, or a school essay, or an email or text message to a friend. Some of these alerts may be false alarms, set off by innocuous research projects or offhand comments, but the most serious alerts may prompt calls to parents or even home visits by school staff members or law enforcement.I write about mental health for The New York Times, including the effects of social media use on children’s brains and algorithms that predict who is at risk for suicide. I’m interested in knowing more about how these monitoring tools are working in real life.If you are a student, parent, teacher or school administrator, I’d like to hear about your experiences. Do you think these tools have saved lives? Do they help students who are anxious or depressed get the care they need? Are you concerned about students’ privacy? Is there any cost to false positives?I will read each submission and may use your contact information to follow up with you. I will not publish any details you share without contacting you and verifying your information.If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.Share Your Experiences with Suicide Prevention Software

Healthcare facilities across the west coast of Florida, from clinics to nursing homes, are temporarily shutting their doors and evacuating patients in preparation for Hurricane Milton’s potentially devastating landfall.Mandatory evacuation orders in Pinellas County, which includes Clearwater and St. Petersburg, affect about 6,600 patients at six hospitals, 25 nursing homes and 44 assisted living facilities, according to the order. Scores of medical clinics and dialysis centers across the region have also closed, including dozens of outpatient facilities operated by the BayCare, a health care network.The region’s only Level 1 trauma center, Tampa General Hospital, has deployed a temporary flood barricade that officials hope will stave off the storm surge. Most of the hospitals in the region that are still open have suspended elective operations or have stopped accepting new patients.University of Florida Health, which operates about a dozen hospitals across the state, had enough food, water and fuel to keep its facilities operating for 96 hours, according to Peyton Wesner, a spokesman.Mary Mayhew, president of the Florida Hospital Association, said many facilities have improved their emergency preparedness in recent years by creating backup water supplies, acquiring generators and purchasing satellite telephones in case cell service is disrupted. Most hospitals have moved key infrastructure to higher floors.But Ms. Mayhew said there was only so much to be done in the face of a storm as powerful as Milton. “In the last few years, hospitals in Florida have had to frequently deal with these types of emergencies, but there is undoubtedly a heightened sense of concern given the magnitude of this storm and where it is likely they hit,” she said.During Hurricane Ian in 2022, Lee Health, a hospital network south of Tampa, was forced to bring in 10 water tankers when municipal water service was disrupted, which prompted evacuations at two of its hospitals. Though no water entered the hospital itself, flooding damaged or destroyed 400 cars in the hospital’s parking lot.“With every storm, we learn things, and we certainly learned about the dangers of storm surge,” said Dr. Larry Antonucci, the system’s president, noting that hospital employees have been asked to consider being dropped off at the facilities by someone else, or using ride share services. “We’re confident we can get through this.”Officials at Tampa General, which is surrounded by water on three sides, are hoping its temporary flood wall will keep the storm surge at bay, just as it did during Helene two weeks ago.The fence, manufactured by a Norwegian company, can withstand up to 15 feet of water, officials said. In one small dose of relief, hospital workers did not have to reinstall the fence to prepare for Milton: They simply never took it down.

PA MediaAn inquest has heard opportunities were missed to “escalate” the treatment given to a 13-year-old girl who died in hospital.

Getty ImagesAn investigation into disgraced bone surgeon Mr Yaser Jabbar has been widened to cover five London hospitals, as 721 patients’ care is being reviewed.

Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind predicted protein shapes with A.I. while David Baker designed “a new protein that was unlike any other,” the committee said.The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for discoveries that show the potential of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to predict the shape of proteins, life’s chemical tools, and to invent new ones.The laureates are: Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, who used A.I. to predict the structure of millions of proteins; and David Baker at the University of Washington, who used computer software to invent a new protein.The impact of the work of this year’s laureates is “truly huge,” Johan Aqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said on Wednesday. “In order to understand how proteins work, you need to know what they look like, and that’s what this year’s laureates have done.”Wednesday’s prize was also the second this week to involve artificial intelligence, highlighting the technology’s growing significance in scientific research.Dr. Hassabis and Dr. Jumper, the committee said, have used their artificial intelligence model, AlphaFold2, to calculate the structure of all human proteins. The researchers “also predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have so far discovered when mapping Earth’s organisms,” the committee said.Dr. Hassabis and Dr. Jumper were part of a team at Google DeepMind, the company’s central A.I. lab, that developed a technology called AlphaFold. This A.I. technology can rapidly and reliably predict the physical shape of proteins and enzymes — the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of viruses, bacteria, the human body and all other living things.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Comedian Miranda Hart has revealed her struggle with chronic fatigue after being diagnosed with Lyme disease.

More bereaved parents in England will now be able to apply for a certificate to formally recognise the loss of their baby.

Getty ImagesA couple in India have said they are “delighted” after a court ordered a hospital to hand over the frozen semen sample of their dead son to them so they could have a grandchild through surrogacy.