Editor’s blog Wednesday 11 August 2010: A drug-led recovery; a new resistant superbug; FT reality; and GMC 4 Ever

This feature in The Independent's business section pronounces that "the other British success story in recent months is the pharmaceutical chemicals sectors, again largely linked to US trade. This sector contributed a respectable £221m extra, and the gain appears to be based on making pills and potions for US and Chinese customers from raw materials and semi-finished items sourced from China".

BBC News picks up on the Lancet Infectious Diseases piece about NDM-1, a new superbug on which no antibiotics yet work. Fun, fun, fun. More details here from The Guardian’s Sarah Boseley.

Makes you think it’s a shame about the Health Protection Agency being abolished and moved into the Department of Public Health, no? Let’s hope nobody important has left.

Meanwhile, this report in the Telegraph suggests that the penny of the new financial reality is starting to drop in FTland.

It suggests that annual plans show that “34 of the 129 foundation trusts believe they are at risk of missing waiting time targets. The documents forecast a drop in trusts’ income for the first time, of between 0.8 and 1.1 per cent … (and ) 50 trusts are planning to take on services such as rehabilitation and home visits which are traditionally handled by others. Eleven trusts also said they were concerned about failures to adequately control superbugs”.

Oh, and whoopee! The DH wants the GMC to carry on doing … whatever it does. You tell us. Answers on a scrapped revalidation document, please.