Improving dementia care in England is a “huge task”, the Alzheimer’s Society has said. The charity is to work with the government to develop a new national strategy for treating the disease and increasing awareness.

A coalition of charities is demanding baby milk be treated like tobacco and subjected to a total advertising ban. The National Childbirth Trust, Save The Children and Unicef blame adverts for many mothers abandoning breast feeding before the recommended six months.

David Cameron today sharpens his commitment to helping the poor by describing those left behind by rising living standards elsewhere in the population as the most urgent political problem facing Britain.

Drugs which slow the progress of Alzheimer’s disease may protect patients at risk of eye damage from glaucoma, say researchers. The University College London team said experiments suggested there were strong similarities between the conditions.

An international trial of drugs to lower blood pressure in the over-80s has been stopped early because the results were so impressive. Researchers, led by Imperial College London, found the drugs significantly cut strokes and heart-related death.

Parents are taking their children to accident and emergency departments unnecessarily and are clogging up the system, the head of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said.

A psychotherapist accused of encouraging his patients to take illegal drugs and join nude workshops is continuing to practise despite being suspended by the official regulators.

A young man who rose from an inner-city background to become a youth worker and a promising horse rider has been shot dead, the 17th teenager to be murdered in the capital this year.

The government says it is making dementia a top priority as it calls on experts to find ways to reduce its spiralling burden on society. There are 560,000 people with dementia in England, each costing the economy £25,391 every year.

The number of patients leaving Health Service hospitals suffering from malnourishment has risen by two-thirds in the past five years.