Expectations of care in Norfolk to be made clear for all

Expectations of care in Norfolk to be made clear for all with the introduction of the Harwood Care and Support Charter

A charter that clearly sets out the standards people should expect from the care they receive is set to be introduced in Norfolk early next year.

Norfolk County Council’s Cabinet have approved the introduction of the Harwood Care and Support Charter which consists of a set of simple statements that organisations and individuals that are signed up to the charter have committed to work towards, and explains what people using care services should expect, including information on what to do if they have concerns.

Dementia deaths more than double in a decade

The proportion of people dying of dementia has more than doubled in a decade, official figures show, and by 2021 one in eight of all deaths could be due to the brain disease.

 

Doctors now record dementia as the underlying cause of death in one in 13 people, up from about one in 33 a decade ago.

By , Medical Correspondent

2:09PM GMT 06 Nov 2012

Every tenth woman in England and Wales now dies of dementia (10.3 per cent), according to mortality figures for 2011 from the Office for National Statistics, up from 4.3 per cent in 2001.

In men, the proportion of deaths from dementia has risen from 2.0 to 5.2 per cent over the course of the decade.

Should these rises be sustained it will mean that by 2021 about 12 per cent of all deaths will be attributed to dementia.

Experts said the figures were a “scary” reminder of the scale of the dementia timebomb facing Britain.

Autism Cannot Be Diagnosed By Brain Imaging Alone

Main Category: Autism
Article Date: 06 Nov 2012 – 0:00 PST

To diagnose autism reliably, we need to better understand what goes awry in people with the disorder

In a column appearing in the current issue of the journal Nature, McLean Hospital biostatistician Nicholas Lange, ScD, cautions against heralding the use of brain imaging scans to diagnose autism and urges greater focus on conducting large, long-term multicenter studies to identify the biological basis of the disorder.