Vaccinating care home staff against influenza can prevent illness, deaths and health service use during periods of moderate influenza activity, concludes a study published online by the BMJ. Weak immune systems mean that many care home residents are vulnerable to influenza outbreaks even when they have been vaccinated. Many countries offer influenza vaccine to healthcare workers every year, but in the UK most care homes do not vaccinate their staff.

This week, the BMJ reveals serious concerns about a study on sudden infant deaths which was used as evidence in several high profile murder appeals. In a special report, freelance journalist Jonathan Gornall raises questions about the paper’s findings and asks was the message of this study misleading?

{mosimage}The wider social impact of immigration to the UK is set to be assessed by an independent body advising ministers, the government has said. Home Secretary John Reid said the proposed body would help assess economic need and skills shortages.

But it will also be charged with advising on where immigration has a negative impact. Mr Reid said at present there was no systematic weighing up of the benefits and costs of immigration. The Home Office says it wants to hear the public’s views on the proposed body before it is introduced by 2008.

Immigration to the UK is being radically overhauled with the introduction of a new “points-based system”. Highly skilled migrants will have more chance of settling in the UK than those with fewer skills.

Mr Reid said he also expected the system to build confidence though a “migration advisory committee” (MAC).

Lisa Earl never thought she would go back to work. Leaving school at 16, she trained as a hairdresser. Then ill health, depression and lack of confidence meant that she spent most of the next 19 years unemployed. But this week she became a wage earner again after completing a training programme that takes people out of the dole queue and into a social care career.

An immigration detention centre with a violent history including a death and repeated disturbances is getting worse, the prisons watchdog has warned. Chief inspector of prisons Anne Owers said Harmondsworth in west London was hard to run – but her report was the poorest ever on a removal centre.

Detainees said they feared bullying, and staff were unaware of a special plan to prevent suicides. The Home Office said it would draw up a plan to improve the centre.

{mosimage}The centre near Heathrow Airport is the largest in the country, handling thousands of people facing deportation every year. In 2004 a detainee committed suicide, sparking a major disturbance that led to its temporary closure.

Since then, Harmondsworth has been at the centre of ongoing campaigns against detention of failed asylum seekers. In 2005, some 50 Zimbabweans held at the centre launched a hunger strike to try to force their cases back into the courts, saying they had been unfairly treated.

Twenty five years after the first case was reported, HIV/AIDS is killing over 250,000 people each month – akin to a tsunami every month, says Professor Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the virus and developer of the HIV/AIDS blood test. His article is part of a special HIV/AIDS theme issue of Student BMJ, in which he calls for sustained research to ensure new ways of preventing and treating this global pandemic.

A nursing home that helps hospitals cope with the pressure of bed blocking could be forced to close. West Sussex County Council will decide whether to launch a consultation into the possible closure of Burscroft Nursing Home, in Pond Road, Shoreham. The home has recently been used to rehabilitate elderly people following surgery so their hospital beds can be released for other patients. Patients stay for up to six weeks until they are ready to return home.

Government plans for children’s databases could end up putting children at increased risk by diverting resources away from frontline services and are already breaking data protection and privacy laws according to a report ordered by the Information Commissioner. The report, Children’s Databases – Safety and Privacy, written by the Foundation for Information Policy and Research (FIPR), examines the range of databases currently in existence across social services, youth offending, education and healthcare and proposals for new databases.

A Christian judge is taking legal action against the UK Government after claiming he had to resign from his role because he was against ruling on adoption cases which would have placed children in the care of same sex couples. Andrew McClintock stepped down after his request to not have to deal with cases involving gay parents were dismissed.

Redistributing wealth in a major economy inevitably involves large numbers. The fact that Gordon Brown is spending £79 billion a year on benefits and tax credits will not, by itself, be his undoing. But it will alarm many pondering a choice between him and David Cameron at the next election that more of their taxes are funding the welfare state than are being spent on preparing young people to make their own way in the world; which is to say, on education.