Theresa May's first test was obesity strategy and she has failed, health experts say Strategy has become national scandal given PM’s pledge to look after poor and socially deprived, campaigners argue  Health experts said Britain’s obesity crisis would ‘bankrupt the NHS’. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA Leading health experts have accused Theresa May   of failing the first test of her premiership over the government’s response to the obesity crisis. The delayed obesity strategy  had already attracted strong criticism  over its failure to restrict junk-food marketing and advertising and its reliance on voluntary action by the food and drink industry. And now one campaigner has labelled it a “national scandal” that augurs ill for the future given that, on entering No 10,  May pledged to reduce inequalities  and that obesity disproportionately affects those in socially deprived areas. “She [May] came in saying ‘We are going ...

WHO recommends new tuberculosis test Robust, rapid DNA-based test can serve as an alternative to sputum smear microscopy Geneva, 11 August 2016 – The World Health Organization has issued a recommendation for a rapid and robust test to diagnose pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in peripheral health centres. The test, known as TB-LAMP (loop-mediated isothermal amplification), requires minimal laboratory infrastructure and has been evaluated as an alternative to sputum smear microscopy, still the most widespread test in use in resource-limited settings. The LAMP methodology has already been used successfully for the detection of malaria and several neglected tropical diseases. TB-LAMP is a unique temperature-independent way of amplifying DNA from TB organisms. It is a manual assay that takes less than one hour and results can be read with the naked eye under ultraviolet light. The robust TB-LAMP instrument can be used at the peripheral health centre level where microscopy is often per...