Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

The NHS announced this week a MMR catch up programme aimed at unvaccinated children aged from 10 - 16. The MMR vaccincation catch-up campaign aims to prevent further measles outbreaks following the recent widely publicised outbreak in Wales. A catch-up programme is required to protect a generation of children, born between 1997 and 2003, who are unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against measles. Low levels of vaccination in this generation were caused by an unsubstantiated scare about the MMR vaccine. The scare was based on an entirely discredited piece of research that claimed that MMR could trigger autism . Targeting this group of children, estimated to be around one million, will help reduce the potential population in which further measles outbreaks could occur. Full details of the programme have not been worked out yet but if your children have not been vaccinated against MMR ring us and book an appointment. Its that easy!

There was an interesting paper and editorial in the BMJ at the weekend ( click here) about infant sleeping. It was a paper comparing whether an intensive educational support programme for new mums compared to normal care made any difference to baby sleeping patterns and new mums health and well being. Some of the data from the paper just confirmed what I thought was pretty obvious. Infants at 12 weeks of age woke on average 9 times a night and at 12 weeks of age the longest period of uninterrupted sleep was 84 minutes. Infants not sleeping is normal and it takes times for infants to develop a normal sleeping pattern. What new parents need to know is that sleep is a developmental process that is biologically driven to mature during the first years of life, and that sleep behaviour and development vary greatly between individuals.. Their sleep patterns begin to consolidate into a night and day time pattern from about 3 months and their body clock matures between 6 and 12 months. Nigh

We have had two vaguely warm days but if you are planning to escape the rain in the summer and go somewhere hot the practice provides a full travel advice service to our patients including travel vaccinations, travel health advice (Slip, Slop, Slap), advice about malaria prophylaxis and Yellow Fever vaccinations. Most travel vaccinations are free - the exceptions are generally if you are going to unusual places or doing something unusual e.g. back packing trips in the wilds or staying somewhere for longer than three months. The commonest vaccinations patients have to pay for are Yellow Fever, Hepatitis B and Rabies vaccinations. You will also have to pay for malaria tablets but the practice does not charge if you need a private prescription for malaria prophylaxis tablets. The practice is a registered Yellow Fever Vaccination centre. We also provide Yellow Fever Vaccinations and Travel Advice to patients who are not registered with the practice. Our travel advice servi

I am sure that by now you will have had a large leaflet through your door about changes to local hospital services in Wakefield and Pontefract. The public consultation started on the 4th March, 2013 and will run until 31st May, 2013. A summary of the proposed changes are: Pinderfields would become a major centre for: Complex medical care Emergency and complex surgery Intensive care Consultant-led birth unit In-patient children's services Pontefract and Dewsbury hospitals would become centres for planned care and surgery with A full range of diagnostic tests, to help diagnose what is wrong with patients More operations, including planned orthopaedic surgery such as knee and hip replacements To find out more and read the consultation documents in full click here for the Meeting the Challenge website. And to complete the online consultation document click here . So, if you have read the documents and want to say something then do it now!