Brittney Griner will be starting in the WNBA All-Star Game a year after she was an honorary choice by the league while she was being detained in Russia

Nearly 200 nations agreed Thursday to launch a fund to support countries hit by global warming, in a "historic" moment at the start of UN...

Alexee Trevizo is released on a $100,000 bond and is allowed to complete the school year without an ankle monitor or house arrest

Elon Musk contracted malaria while on safari in South Africa in 2000 and almost died, a new biography has claimed. Walter Isaacson detailed the billionaire’s near-death experience in a new biography published this week. Mr Musk contracted malaria during a holiday in South Africa after being ousted as CEO of PayPal by Peter Thiel in October 2000. It was Mr Musk’s first time back in his native South Africa since leaving for Canada aged 17, Mr Isaacson wrote. During his trip, Mr Musk and his then-wife Justine Musk went to a game reserve. When he returned to California in January 2001, Mr Musk reportedly began to feel dizzy and experienced recurring waves of chills and started throwing up in an emergency room, leading to him being wrongly diagnosed with viral meningitis. The billionaire’s condition worsened until his “pulse was barely perceptible,” according to the book. Mr Musk was only diagnosed with malaria after a doctor with expertise in infectious diseases passed by his bed at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City and realized he had a potentially fatal form of the disease that can affect the central nervous system or cause “acute respiratory distress,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mr Isaacson described how it took Mr Musk five months to fully recover after he was put in intensive care for 10 days and treated with doxycycline and chloroquine. An email written by the head of human resources at X.com — later Paypal — to Mr Musk’s former business partners Peter Thiel and Max Levchin described how he was “actually only hours from death,” the biography revealed. The Tesla CEO’s mother Maye Musk described the ordeal as “terrifying”. “I remember your malaria infection very clearly. You were unconscious, yellow and shivering for days. Tubes were going in and out of you. It was a terrifying time. Modern medicine saved you,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. While he was in hospital, Mr Musk’s then-colleagues found he’d taken out a life insurance policy worth $100 million on behalf of X.com. “If he had died, all of our financial problems were going to be solved,” Mr Thiel reportedly told Isaacson. Mr Musk told Isaacson: “Vacations will kill you. Also, South Africa – that place is still trying to destroy me.” The tech mogul co-founded online bank X.com in 1999. The company merged with another payment system, Confinity, which was co-founded by Thiel and Levchin, and was renamed PayPal. Isaacson was given access to the Tesla and SpaceX CEO over the past two years, which culminated in Mr Musk’s biography being published this week. The writer spoke with several figures close to Mr Musk while writing the biography, including his ex-girlfriend Grimes and his former wives Tallulah Riley and Justine Musk, as well as his estranged father. So far, the book has also claimed Musk and Grimes secretly welcomed a third child, in addition to X and their 22-month-old daughter Exa Dark Sideræl. However, it was not immediately clear when their second son, named Techno Mechanicus or “Tau”, was born. In the biography, Isaacson also writes that the tech mogul’s brother Kimbal Musk and his friends “hated” ex-girlfriend and actor Amber Heard so intensely, it “made their distaste for Justine [Musk’s first wife] pale”. One review by The New York Times said Isaacson’s biography stitches together a portrait of a Mr Musk as a “mercurial ‘man-child’”. Read More Grimes says Elon Musk was ‘clueless’ about why she was upset by C-section photo Elon Musk ‘hardly remembers’ his own ‘demon-like’ episodes, biographer claims Book Review: 'Elon Musk' offers a revealing but not surprising portrait of tech mogul Elon Musk makes prediction for imminent Starship launch Twitter rival Bluesky hits new milestone Putin praises Musk days after report Tesla boss stopped Ukrainian attack

North Korean state media say leader Kim Jong Un has again toured munitions factories and has ordered a drastic increase in production of missiles and other weapons

By Raphael Satter and Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Two U.S. Navy sailors have been arrested on charges of handing over

ALPHARETTA, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 18, 2023--

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Mental health patients have been left languishing in hospitals for years due to a chronic shortage in community care, as the number of people trapped on wards hits a record high, The Independent can reveal. Analysis shows 3,213 patients were stuck on units for more than three months last year, including 325 children kept in adult units. Of those a “deeply concerning” number have been deemed well enough to leave but have nowhere to go. One of these cases was Ben Craig, 34, who says he was left “scarred” after being stranded on a ward for two years – despite being fit enough to leave – because two councils fought over who should pay for his supported housing. He missed his daughter's birth and didn’t meet her until she was two months old while waiting to be discharged, which only exacerbated his depression. He told The Independent: “I was promised I was going to be moving on, but it just seemed like it went on forever.” The average stay for patients in low-security hospitals was 833 days in 2022-23. The NHS does not collect data on how long people are waiting to be discharged, but mental health charity Mind said Mr Craig’s case was far from unique. Leaked reports, obtained by The Independent, also reveal NHS community services are struggling to see patients, while the NHS is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to house those who could be discharged. Documents for 2022-23 obtained and analysed by The Independent reveal: Adult mental health beds cost the NHS between £500 and £1,000 a day, compared to £5,000 per patient per year for community care One in five referrals for community care was rejected as the NHS battles a 12 per cent staff vacancy rate Patients waited 13 weeks on average to see a community mental health worker, but some waited up to 60 weeks The 3,213 patients stuck for more than three months was an increase of 639 on the year before and an all-time high, according to an analysis of NHS data In August, 10 per cent of patients were waiting 221 days to start community treatment One in 10 patients under a community mental health team did not see a healthcare worker for a year Saffron Cordery, deputy chief executive for NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, told The Independent mental health patients stuck in hospitals were experiencing “personal distress” and getting ill again while they wait. She called on the government to put mental health on an “equal foot” to physical care and said not doing so suggested the government was content not to treat all patients equally. One senior NHS source said long stays in mental health units had become “normalised” and patients were becoming institutionalised. “These 60 and 90 [days] stayers are just being medicated and drifting. They’re adjusting meds to stabilise the person ... These long-stays people can get completely dependent, they lose contact with the world [and] their life, They’re terrible for people,” they said. ‘Robbed’ Mr Craig was admitted to Prestwich Hospital in September 2019 with psychosis from prison after his mental health deteriorated and he began hearing voices. In 2020 he was told by doctors he was well enough to be discharged home after his sentence ended. However, he then had two years of his life “robbed” as two councils rowed over who should fund the mental health hostel he needed to be discharged into to support his recovery. He was eventually discharged into supported living in September 2022 where he still receives mental health support. Mr Craig, who now lives in Manchester, told The Independent: “I was very depressed, I am still not over it properly yet. When I was there, I just didn’t want to go out or anything, so just stayed in my bed all the time. “I missed my daughter’s birth, and I didn’t see her until she was two months old ... it’s left me scarred.” Even when he was finally discharged into supported living accommodation he says the community mental health team had “no input” into his care and says he was still struggling to get in contact with his community service team. Rheian Davies, head of Mind’s legal unit, told The Independent that cases like Mr Craig’s showed councils were failing in their legal duty to fund mental health support in the community. She said the charity had seen patients with longer discharge delays than Mr Craig’s due to this problem. “It’s deeply concerning that people are finding themselves stuck in hospital, their lives on hold, due to a lack of supported housing,” she said. “Delays in leaving hospital cause uncertainty and anxiety that can hamper or even reverse recovery. “This takes a huge emotional toll on the person and their loved ones, but the delay in discharge also means there are fewer beds available for people experiencing mental health crises.” She added that patients “deserve much better than being held indefinitely in hospital settings when they are well enough to return to the community”. Ms Davies said: “This case [Mr Craig’s] is a real opportunity to reduce the delays and hurdles caused by a disjointed system.” Greater Manchester University Hospital said: “We work hard with all our system partners to ensure where patients are ready for discharge, they can do so as quickly as it is safe to do so.” Abena Oppong-Asare, Labour’s shadow mental health minister, said The Independent’s exposé showed NHS mental health services were “in crisis”. She added: “The Independent investigation reveals the appalling reality that patients are being left in hospital for months, when community care can be far more effective and less expensive for the NHS.” As part of its election manifesto pledges, Labour has promised to recruit 8,500 more mental health professionals, paid for through plans to abolish “tax loopholes for private equity fund managers and tax breaks for private schools”. The Department of Health and Social Care said in 2021-22 an additional £116m was invested in the NHS for mental health discharges and that it will have invested £1bn more in the sector by March 2024. An NHS England spokesperson said: “There is no doubt mental health services are under significant pressure, with the NHS treating record numbers of young people and community crisis services seeing a 30 per cent increase in referrals compared to before the pandemic, and NHS urgent and emergency care also treating record numbers.” Read More Friends target rowing world record to raise awareness of mental health challenge Women in mental health crisis being jailed in prisons deemed ‘unfit for purpose’ Suspect in fatal Hawaii nurse stabbing pleaded guilty last year to assaulting mental health worker The Priory hospital fined £140k after woman dies on ‘utter shambles’ ward Dumped in A&E and left untreated for 5 days: Shameful plight of vulnerable patients Anger over Tory minister’s ‘disgraceful’ Scotland heroin jibe