The Director of Public Health for Northern Ireland’s first annual report will be highlighted in the west of the province this Thursday 19 August 2010 at 12.00 noon at Gransha Park House, Londonderry. This significant report highlights the many public health challenges that affect people living in Northern Ireland. Dr Carolyn Harper, Director of Public Health leads the public health team that tackles this complex agenda, working with many statutory, community and voluntary partner organisations across health, local government, education, housing and other sectors.

New Service Standards and a Quality Assessment Framework for community and voluntary organisations who work in the fields of suicide prevention and mental health will be launched on Wednesday 18 August at 10.00 am in the Tara Centre in Omagh. The standards were developed by the CLEAR project, a partnership of community and voluntary sector agencies funded by the Public Health Agency and managed by Derry Healthy Cities.

With thousands of young people receiving exam results this summer, the Public Health Agency (PHA) wishes to remind parents of the value of talking to their child about alcohol.Victoria Creasy, Senior Manager for Public Health at the PHA says: “Alcohol is a huge part of our culture and there is a strong link between starting to drink at a young age and problem alcohol use as an adult.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared that the H1N1 influenza pandemic is over and says that worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns. The decision was taken at a meeting of the WHO Emergency Committee on 10 August 2010 and comes almost exactly 14 months after WHO moved to full phase 6 pandemic alert on 11 June 2009.

The PHA is using International Youth Day as an opportunity to highlight the issue of smoking among young people in Northern Ireland. The vast majority of our children don’t smoke, but almost 1 in 10 children aged 11-16 are regular smokers.¹

Antimicrobial resistance in bacteria is an emerging problem and a serious threat to public health. Today a new research paper was published which identifies a new resistance mechanism in bacteria, which makes them resistant to an important group of antibiotics known as carbapenems. What are carbapenems?