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NHS 'personal budget' for patients outlined

Proposals for NHS patients in England to 'buy' healthcare closely modelled on social care budgets
- Patients to receive own budgets under NHS reform
EU to let patients get transplants abroad

New directive will allow Britons who need organs urgently to get them in countries with a surplus
Drug-free help for postnatal depression

Studies find counselling and peer-group support for new mothers might help prevent depression
Brown steps in after Digby Jones calls for half of civil service to be sacked

PM's spokesman defends 'honest, decent people who work hard'
Government rolls out mortgage help

£200m package aims to stop vulnerable homeowners from losing their property
Food watchdog puts calorie count on the takeaway menu

Restaurants, takeaways and canteens may adopt 'traffic light' code to tackle Britain's obesity crisis
Women in developing countries 300 times more likely to die in childbirth

UN report reveals 500,000 women in developing world die each year as a result of pregnancy
'This is what hell must look like'

Two Norwegian doctors witnessed first-hand the nightmare scenes inside Gaza, becoming the voice of the western media on the conflict
- Gallery: Save the Children in Gaza

In pictures

Race in Britain

The Stephen Lawrence generation - ten Britons born in 1974, the same year as Stephen Lawrence, talk about race and what it means to them today
Arsenic found in internet health drink

Product that claims to treat bowel disease contains dangerous levels of poisonous metal, says Food Standards Agency
Surgical checklist cuts deaths
by 40%, study reveals

'Startling' results indicate millions of lives could be saved worldwide if surgeons follow simple procedure
- WHO pre-operative checklist (pdf)
Life sentence for father who killed baby son in fit of anger

Man, 24, killed 11-week-old boy by squeezing him and dropping him on the floor
Ministers in talks with Muslim leaders

Smith and Blears try to gauge level of extremist threat from community leaders and councils
Baby P tragedy casts shadow over Haringey byelection

Candidates council byelection seeking to use the vote as a referendum on Labour's record
C diff superbug cases fall by a third

Drop of 35% in cases of the bacterial infection compared with last year

Joe Public blog

More news and features

Cold shouldered

Still only 1% of chief executives within the NHS are non-white, despite a plethora of initiatives to strengthen diversity. John Carvel on why the service has failed to tackle 'snowcapping'
Generation Crunch need real jobs

The new apprenticeship scheme is welcome, but strict steps must be taken to ensure it is not just employers who benefit, writes Libby Brooks
Question time

Former TV news presenter Ed Mitchell on how alcoholism and debt left him sleeping rough
No substitute for experience

Child protection work must have skilled chiefs, says Ray Jones
Learnt behaviour

With children as young as 10 being initiated into drug use by their parents, a new report calls for a family-led approach to addiction, writes Denis Campbell

When cancer comes to class

Pupils who are seriously ill need extra help and reassurance. So do their friends - and teachers, too, says Dorothy Lepkowska
The end of their world

Patrick Barkham meets some of those whose homes will be under threat if Heathrow gets its third runway
Star treatment of drug addiction

A series of screenings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts hopes to use psychoanalysis to look at the depiction of drug addiction in film
- Clips from films in the Institute of Psychoanalysis season