The decline of the extended family the high divorce rate and the growth in people living

The decline of the extended family, the high divorce rate and the growth in people living alone are all thought to increase the likelihood of emergency admissions.Professor Michael Shepherd, chairman of the working party, said evidence suggested that 20-25 per cent of patients admitted to hospital could be cared for more appropriately in their own homes or elsewhere. As with previous inquiries no single cause was found for the rise which is attributed to a combination of social, medical and professional factors. The NHS needs to be properly resourced with long-term funding, not short-term handouts.”A report by a working party of the confederation and the Royal College of Physicians, published yesterday, says that emergency hospital admissions rose 9.9 per cent in the four years from 1991-92 to 1994-95, an increase of 335,000, equivalent to an extra 920 a day. “It is going to be a tough winter and we don’t know if it will be enough to get us through.

Last December, emergency admissions rose 37 per cent compared with December 1995.Stephen Thornton, chief executive of the confederation, which represents health authorities and trusts, said the extra pounds 300m for the NHS this year, announced by the Government in the autumn, might be too little. Emergency admissions to hospital are rising at 1,000 a day yet at least a quarter of the patients involved do not need to be there. Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor, looks at new ways of keeping NHS beds empty. Hot lines for patients and GPs who need emergency advice and training for ambulance staff to discriminate among 999 callers are being tried by NHS trusts in an effort to curb the soaring number of emergency admissions.
The NHS Confederation said hospitals around the country were struggling against the rising tide of emergencies and warned that a flu epidemic, or sustained cold spell, could put the health service under intolerable pressure this winter. The union has confirmed records of 250,000 deaths in concentration camps and believes up to 500,000 gypsies may have lost their lives.. Dr Donald Kenrick, of the International Romani Union, said its research suggested gold and jewellery taken from gypsies in the Jasenovac camp in Croatia, had been sent to the Vatican. Its work was held up for many years after the war by disputes over competing claims and the British did not want that to happen again if negotiations became public.Croatia also announced that it would be donating its share of the gold to the fund.

The second day of the conference investigating Nazi gold, hosted by Mr Cook, saw the Vatican coming under fire from delegates from Britain, Israel and the Romanies. But British delegates said the records must be secret until after the work of the commission was complete. “We are trying to reconstruct the Nazi gold trail.That was the job of the TGC We’re trying to reinvent the wheel,” Mr Steinberg said America supports this move. He said it should have been returned to them in 1945 and it was obvious the pounds 40m remaining should be returned to survivors now.
The discovery of the document, from files not yet published, also threw weight behind demands to open the archives. Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, has launched a fund for Holocaust survivors, and suggested that the outstanding gold could be donated for the benefit of victims of the Nazis. The final payout of 5.6 tons of gold is due within months under the auspices of the Tripartite Gold Commission of America, Britain and France who were charged with administering it at the end of the war. But Elan Steinberg, of the World Jewish Congress, produced a previously unknown document yesterday which showed that the Allies knew that at least 55 tons of the gold in German reserves had come originally from the accounts of private individuals.

Governments due to receive pounds 40m of gold recaptured from the Nazis at the end of the war need full access to archives to decide its fate, Jewish organisations said yesterday. He said: “Our hands are tied behind our backs and these cheap imports are underpinned by aid from the Irish government and the European Commission.”Elsewhere, farmers picketed supermarkets at Wrexham and Middlewich in Cheshire, while at Fishguard more than 200 farmers succeeded in turning back three refrigerated lorries which contained chicken and dairy products but not beef.Many supermarket chains, including Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury and Waitrose, cleared bone-beef products from their shelves following yesterday’s government announcement.. Beef producers in Scotland last night staged a demonstration at Stranraer, an entry port for beef from Ireland.George Lyon, vice-president of the the National Farmers’ Union of Scotland, accompanied other officials and union members at the demonstration. At Holyhead, six vehicles carrying Irish meat were refused entry by a blockade of more than 500 farmers.It is becoming clear that since the first protest on Sunday night, when 40 tonnes of Irish beefburgers were thrown into Holyhead harbour, farmers believe that conventional channels are failing to resolve problems claimed to threaten the whole fabric of rural Wales.The Scots were following suit.