1.     The Euro Health Consumer Index, which measures which country’s residents are most satisfied with their healthcare system, have the best outcomes, and have the best access to healthcare and drugs. The Netherlands came top with 872 points out of 1,000 followed by Denmark, Iceland, Luxembourg and  Belgium. The UK ranked in 12^th place (two places higher since the previous index in 2009), with 721 points along with Ireland and Austria. www.healthpowerhouse.com/ehci2012.

2.     UK health ministers are launching a consultation into how food manufacturers can label their food to show calories, fat, saturated fats, sugar, salt in their products.  The EU has spent the past three years  trying to agree the system and is legislation which will come into effect in 2016.

3.     Plans to have been scrapped to provide Clinical Commissioning Groups with their own communications and public relations service. The HSJ reported that the “communications CSS failed to pass ‘checkpoint two’ of the commissioning board’s own assurance process.” http://bit.ly/JdCXg9

4.   The BMA have begun to ballot their members to see if they want to take industrial action in defence of changes being made to their pensions. Polls from @guardian, @bmj_latest and @doc2doc show 65%, 71% and 67% respectively say docs should strike over pension changes