The flu epidemic hit a secondary school in the Zeeland city of Goes hard these past days. A quarter of the 1,600 pupils at the Goese Lyceum location on Oranjeweg are home sick, something the school never experienced before. "We're now also seeing quite a few colleagues fall over", rector Carin Biesterbosch said to NU.nl.
Health
Feb 13 '19 13:30
The court in Rotterdam gave a number of children conceived through a sperm donor clinic permission to use the DNA of fertility doctor Jan Karbaat to find out whether he used his own sperm to inseminate their mothers and is therefore their biological father. With this ruling on Wednesday the court in Rotterdam put an end to years of uncertainty for dozens of people, AD reports.
Feb 13 '19 12:40
Victims of sexual violence in the Netherlands no longer have to pay healthcare deductibles when they incur medical costs. With this one year long experiment, the Dutch government wants to find out whether free care will lower the threshold for seeking help, NOS reports.
Victims can go to a Center for Sexual Violence to get help. These are usually connected to hospitals' emergency room. The Centers perform trace evidence investigation, but they also offer psychological help and tests for venereal diseases.
Feb 13 '19 09:18
Dutchbat soldiers who were stationed at the headquarters in Potocari during the Bosnian civil war in 1994 and 1995 are pressing attempted aggravated assault charges against the Ministry of Defense because they were exposed to toxic substances, EenVandag reports.
The Dutchbat headquarters were located in an old battery factory in the Bosnian village, near Srebrenica. According to the soldiers, the factory contained, among other things, asbestos, chemicals and a vat with a "nuclear" warning on it."
Feb 12 '19 08:26
Coalition party D66 and the Dutch association of pediatricians AJN are pleading for the government to conduct a thorough investigation into treatments that claim to "cure" young people from being gay. If these therapies are indeed as harmful as expected, they must be banned, D66 parliamentarian Vera Bergkamp said to EenVandaag.
"Young people must be able to be completely themselves. These therapies are at odds with this", Bergkamp said. She believes that these "treatments" can push young people struggling with their sexual orientation and faith over the edge.
Feb 11 '19 16:20
In the coming years Amsterdam University Medical Center will be preparing more generic versions of rare and expensive medicines in their own pharmacy, with the goal of making these medicines more readily available and cheaper than the medicines offered by pharmaceutical companies. This was made possible by a 5 million euros donation from the VriendenLoterij, the Amsterdam hospital said in a press release.
Feb 8 '19 08:15
People undergoing surgery at night are at a higher risk of suffering complications and having to stay in hospital for longer than those undergoing surgeries during the daytime, according to an international study involving 146 hospitals across 29 countries, the British Journal of Anesthesia announced in a press release. According to the BJA, this is the first study looking into the occurrence of common adverse events during night-time and day-time surgery.
Feb 6 '19 14:20
Multiple experts and aid agencies in Noord-Brabant failed in caring for a baby who died in Breda as a result of abuse within the family, the Inspectorates for Healthcare and Youth and for Justice and Security concluded after investigation, NU.nl reports.
The 7-month-old boy died in hospital late in 2017. An autopsy showed that the baby died because he was beaten or shaken violently. His father was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.
Feb 6 '19 11:00
Health service GGD is expanding its environmental research into emissions by the Zutphen industrial area to include a cancer cluster investigation, GGD environmental health consultant Steven van der Lelie announced. The municipalities of Zutphen and Lochem asked for this additional investigation due to persistent unrest in Eefde-West over a remarkable number of cancer diagnoses, De Stentor reports.
Feb 5 '19 15:10
People with a healthy lifestyle - who don't smoke, are not overweight, and have healthy blood pressure - on average live six years longer than people with a more unhealthy lifestyle, according to the interim results of a long-term Rotterdam population study, NOS reports.
Feb 4 '19 13:50
Last year 116 thousand Dutch people were diagnosed with cancer, according to the Netherlands' comprehensive cancer center IKNL. Especially the number of patients with skin cancer increased significantly over the past years, NOS reports.
Feb 1 '19 15:50
People who work in an office that has plants in it call in sick 20 percent less often than people working in rooms with no plants, according to research by Wageningen University and scientific company Fytagoras. Having plants in the workplace amounts to an average of 1.6 sick days less per employee per year, the researchers concluded, RTL Nieuws reports.
Feb 1 '19 07:31
Three visitors to the Alrijne Hospital in Leiderdorp were hurt on Thursday after a decorative tree fell on them in the restaurant. The tree is about 4 meters tall, with a real trunk, but fake leaves, NU.nl reports.
The hospital could not say anything about the severity of the victims' injuries, but told NU.nl on Thursday that they were all likely to be discharged by Thursday night. The incident happened at around 2:00p.m. in restaurant Sante.
Jan 31 '19 14:30
The municipality of Tilburg, the Railway Museum, and NS subsidiary NedTrain are responsible for health damage suffered by people who were exposed to carcinogenic chromium 6 while refurbishing old trains in a NS workplace, according to a committee that investigated exposure to chromium 6 at the NS workplace and the subsequent health complaints, NOS reports.
Jan 31 '19 10:20
A 28-year-old man who spent eight hours trapped under rubble after a gas explosion leveled a building in The Hague on Sunday, again underwent surgery on Wednesday.
Jan 29 '19 14:30
The most popular baby names in the Netherlands last year were Lucas and Julia. A total of 797 baby girls were named Julia last year, and 681 newborn boys were dubbed Lucas, social insurance bank SVB announced on Tuesday.
Jan 25 '19 11:10
There are major problems at prison hospital JCvSZ in Scheveningen. The medical disciplinary committee received multiple complaints, the hospital received internal warnings about hygiene, and prisoners have taken to writing letters about their treatment. "Of course we are all prisoners, but this is not human", one detainee wrote, De Gelderlander reports.
In open letters, five detainees in JCvSZ complain about poor medical supervision, receiving incorrect medication, black mold on the walls, and a lack of activities. "We are sometimes under lock and key for 23 hours a day."
Jan 23 '19 15:10
Doctors, the Dutch Patient Federation and elderly union ANBO are calling on people, especially older people, to think about whether or not they want to be resuscitated. Many people don't think about this, resulting in patients having to suddenly make a decision during an emergency situation or prior to a risky medial procedure, they said to AD.
Jan 21 '19 15:40
The Netherlands' national vaccination program works - some 450 children's lives are saved through it every year - but it is too limited. The Dutch government must include more infectious diseases in the national vaccination program, multiple vaccination experts said in advise to the Tweede Kamer, AD reports.
Jan 15 '19 13:20
Last year a record number of people in the Netherlands donated their organs and tissue. A total of 273 deceased people donated their organs last year and 2,398 people donated tissue, according to preliminary figures from Dutch transplant foundation NTS. In total 815 organs were transplanted, an increase of 15 percent compared to 2017, NOS reports.
Jan 15 '19 09:16
Hospitals of the Noordwest Ziekenhuizgroep canceled all surgeries and appointments for the time being due to a major computer outage, the organization announced on its website. Patient records are not accessible due to the outage, NU.nl reports.
All appointments at outpatient clinics and supporting departments like radiology and the laboratory are canceled. The hospitals can not call patients to cancel the appointments in person, because their contact details are recorded in the inaccessible patient records.
Jan 14 '19 13:20
Last year there were 769 incidents in the Netherlands in which a medicine was temporarily or permanently unavailable, an increase of 5 percent compared to the year before, according to pharmacists' organization KNMP. In 2017 the medicine shortage increased by 3 percent, the Telegraaf reports.
"It is mopping with the tap open. Patient and pharmacist struggle with this enormously every day. The patient is regularly given another box because the pharmacist has to move to an alternative. KNMP chairman Gerben Klein Nulent said to the newspaper.
Jan 11 '19 14:50
Sjinkie Knegt sustained severe burns when lighting the wood stove in his home in Bantega, Friesland on Thursday. The 29-year-old short-track skater was rushed to a hospital in Groningen by ambulance, NOS reports.
Jan 4 '19 07:56
The Dutch association for trauma surgery NVT register 90 fireworks injuries this New Year's, five fewer than last year. The 90 patients include 32 children, NU.nl reports.
