Healthcare standards for children and adolescents in England will be set by a national service framework (NSF) launched this week.

The NSF service framework for children, young people and maternity services will dictate children's community health and social care and is in addition to the NSF already in place for children's hospital care.

Experts have been concerned that until now children have been treated as mini-adults. The NSF says that children must be recognised as having different needs to adults. It also says that children must be involved with decisions on their treatment.

However, the framework is already being criticised for not including targets and for not being backed by dedicated funding.

Twenty organisations have launched a joint manifesto to improve care of people living with long-term conditions.

Seventeen million reasons: improving the lives of people with long-term conditions has three aims:

• ensure people have rapid access to expert diagnosis and needs assessment
• give patients proper access to information and advice to help them make the right choices to maximise their quality of life
• personalise services with individual care plans to ensure people have the care they need when they need it

Chief executive of the Long-term Medical Conditions Alliance, David Pink, said:

‘We have already seen waiting lists for operations successfully reduced to below one million, but there are over 17 million people in the UK currently living with long-term conditions such as asthma, diabetes, arthritis, MS or cancer. The priority for all three political parties must now be to improve the lives of one third of the population. And we need a health debate that talks less about emergency care and more about what millions of people are living with day in, day out.’

The document was launched at the House of Commons and the partnership hopes that political parties will include the proposals in their general election manifestos.

The partnership is made up of the following organisations:

Alzheimer’s Society; Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance; Arthritis Care; Asthma UK; Breakthrough Breast Cancer; British Society for Rheumatology; CancerBACUP; Continence Foundation; Developmental Adult Neuro-Diversity Association Diabetes UK; Epilepsy Action; Long-term Medical Conditions Alliance; Macmillan Cancer Relief; MS Society; National Society for Epilepsy; New Health Network; NHS Confederation; Parkinson’s Disease Society; Rethink; and the Stroke Association.

The £2.3m ‘well man’ clinic scheme has been boosted by an extra £800,000 from the Scottish Executive.

The scheme to encourage men to take more responsibility for their health was launched in June 2004. The clinics aim to make it easier for men to visit a doctor for regular check-ups.

Partnerships in three NHS board areas (Borders, Lanarkshire and the Western Isles) are to receive the funding, to be distributed over two years.

An inquiry into the influence of the pharmaceutical industry has frustrated MPs because senior civil servants appear unwilling to highlight conflicts of interest.

The House of Commons Health Select Committee has gathered written submissions from stakeholders and questioned senior officials from the DH and the Department of Trade and Industry — including Professor Kent Woods, chief executive of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Since the inquiry was announced in June, industry critics have been eagerly awaiting a chance to look into the MHRA's investigation into SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressants.

Other topics covered included:

• source of drug innovation
• influence of pharma sales representatives on prescribing
• NHS' reliance on industry support for training

Several committee members said they were frustrated that civil servants do not appear concerned by some of the industry's practices. Labour MP Jon Owen Jones commented that 'Either things are going remarkably well or there's a certain reluctance to give specific examples.'

Chief pharmaceutical officer Jim Smith replied that tighter controls and protocols on prescribing meant undue influence was a thing of the past. He added that the NHS was able to monitor prescribing: 'If there is any suspicion of untoward influence, the appropriate health body will look into that.'

Speaking on GSK's release of data on its SSRI antidepressant Seroxat, Professor Kent Woods said: 'There has been a much greater willingness on the part of the industry to put them in the public domain, and I think opinions are moving quite quickly.'

Some witnesses may be less kind: Richard Brook, chief executive of mental health charity MIND will be questioned soon. He resigned from the MHRA's panel investigating SSRI safety, claiming that the regulator was listening to the industry's 'aggressive promotion' and not patient experience.

Other witnesses include:

• healthcare professional representative bodies
• government ministers
• the ABPI

The second evidence session is on Thursday 14 October, with healthcare professionals. There will be further hearings in November and December.

Healthcare infections, such as the superbug MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus), are now at the top of the Welsh Assembly's to do list.

Health Minister Jane Hutt has launched a new strategy for combating these infections and has called for healthcare teams across Wales to take responsibility for the issue.

A grant of £260,000 has been distributed across the principality to help trusts implement the strategy.

The strategy has the following aims:

• staff must understand the impact of infection and infection control practices to enable them to carry out their responsibilities to patients, other staff, visitors and themselves
• patients will be treated in environments that minimise the risk of infection
• there are clear accountability arrangements, with each directorate working with the trust infection control specialist to determine the priorities for action in their area of activity
• trusts must adopt surveillance and audit programmes to monitor their infection control