Health headlines aren’t always depressing and scary - as these highlight

It’s so easy to feel like health headlines are always full of doom and gloom. In reality though, there are lots of ‘good news’ stories out there, from groundbreaking research breakthroughs and drug developments, to awareness campaigns that change millions of lives - monumental success stories with loads to celebrate.

They may not always be as attention-grabbing and don’t rack up the same scale of response on Twitter unfortunately, but ‘good news’ health stories do exist and are often the result of a lot of hard work going on in the background.

“Since the discovery of HIV and AIDS in the early-1980s, treatment has progressed to the point where a person living with HIV on effective antiretroviral treatment can now lead a full and active life and live a normal lifespan. Treatment reduces the level of the virus in a person’s body to ‘undetectable’ levels, which means they cannot pass it on,” says Natasha Dhumma, Head of Policy at NAT (National AIDS Trust).

“Around the world, 1.3 million men are diagnosed with prostate cancer every year. Movember is a major funder of prostate cancer biomedical research internationally, and we’ve worked hard to establish a strong alliance of researchers and clinicians to work collaboratively on a range of projects that address critical unmet needs for men living with this disease,” says Dr Mark Buzza, global director of biomedical research at Movember.

“A Movember-funded clinical study has recently provided evidence for the first time that a new imaging technique, PSMA PET/CT, is more accurate than conventional imaging at detecting cancer that’s spread to other parts of the body.

This will allow clinicians to be more confident in determining the best course of treatment, which will lead to patients being treated more appropriately and ultimately, lives being saved.

“We have seen incredible progress as a result of the UK’s combined approach to tackling smoking over the last few decades. After the roll out of stop smoking services 20 years ago, an estimated one million smokers have quit for good, greatly cutting down their risk of suffering from smoking-related diseases,” says Alison Cook, chair of the Taskforce for Lung Health.

Since the NHS cervical screening programme was introduced back in 1988, it’s gone on to save an estimated 5,000 lives a year. In fact, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust, which is dedicated to eradicating the disease, says around 75% of cervical cancers are prevented entirely thanks to smear tests, which detect early warning signs of cell changes before cancer develops.

Developments have continued to be made, with the introduction of HPV vaccines for certain age groups (the virus is a key risk factor - although it’s important to remember there are different types of HPV, and the vast majority of people with the virus will not get cancer), and last year seeing changes to the screening programme with the introduction of HPV testing, which is believed will help prevent deaths even further.