Derby Street Pharmacy opens in Hanley after refit of former pub The New Inn

Pharmacy staff are celebrating after opening a new outlet – following a £100,000 transformation of a disused city centre pub, The Sentinel reports.

The Derby Street Pharmacy, in Hanley, welcomed its first customers yesterday following a nine-month refurbishment of The New Inn.

It provides over-the-counter prescriptions, flu jabs and emergency contraception, as well as reviewing how patients take medication.

The launch comes as cuts are planned to pharmacy provision, which Healthwatch Stoke-on-Trent fears could lead to the closure of a third of North Staffordshire's 117 chemists.

Hull GP Eugene Stryjakiewicz acted dishonestly, tribunal rules

A Hull GP acted dishonestly by failing to tell a pharmacist he had been suspended from working as a doctor a tribunal ruled, the Hull Daily Mail reports.

Dr Eugene Stryjakiewicz went to Boots in Hessle for a prescription of antibiotics for a patient without telling the pharmacist Jansen Kong-Yan Tang he had been suspended from the medical register.

A Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled the GP also acted dishonestly by telling Mr Tang he couldn't fax over the prescription for the medication because the surgery's fax machine was broken.

In a written ruling, the tribunal stated: "You must have known that your actions were misleading, that your failure to inform Mr Tang led him to dispense medication which he would not otherwise have done and that, therefore, you acted dishonestly."

Gut pills like statins without side-effect

A new cholesterol-purging daily pill is as good at clearing arteries as statins but with none of the side effects, The Times reports an early stage trial suggests.

Made up of hundreds of millions of freeze-dried and compressed bacteria, the tablet is in the vanguard of a new generation of medicines that use micro-organisms in the human gut as a motley army of living drugs.

It could help to curb Britain’s insatiable appetite for statins, which are taken by between five and 10 million people.

Although statins are a cheap and effective way of cutting levels of “bad” cholesterol, their side effects can include headaches, nosebleeds and joint pain.

Norovirus costs the world some £44 billion per year, says new study

A common, highly contagious and sometimes deadly stomach bug known as norovirus costs the world some £44 billion per year, mainly in lost productivity, The Telegraph reports.

The study by experts at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

"You only seem to hear about it when people get sick on a cruise ship or at a restaurant, but norovirus is everywhere," said lead researcher Sarah Bartsch.

"It doesn't matter how old you are or if you're in a wealthy country or a poorer one or if you've had it before - you can get it again. And it is really unpleasant."

The commissioning of specialised services in the NHS

NHS England’s spending on specialised services has increased at a much greater rate than other parts of the NHS, according to today’s report from the National Audit Office, Politics Home reports.

Although NHS England took responsibility for commissioning these services three years ago, it still does not have an agreed overarching service strategy, consistent information from all providers on costs, access to services and outcomes or how efficiently services are being delivered.

Specialised services are provided to patients who have rare conditions or who need a specialised team working together at a centre.

There are currently 146 specialised services covering a diverse range of conditions including renal (kidney), specific mental health problems and rare cancers.