Aurora Comms Blog

Aurora top 20 - August 2009

Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by Handbaglady in Communications, News

Congratulations to the England cricket team for winning the Ashes series. After working on a cricket-themed disease awareness campaign throughout the summer, the Aurora team has been following the action avidly and for some in the office, with a new found interest. It’s always lovely to beat the Aussies!

Movers and Shakers

The summer is a notoriously quiet period for news stories and health was no exception, there was not a huge amount of movement in the top five slots - all the usual suspects were there: swine flu, cancer, nutrition, obesity and alcohol. These areas remain subjects of media fascination and in turn must be areas that the British public are interested in reading about. There were no new entries this month but a number of re-entries, including superbugs where the good news was that the Evening Standard and Daily Mail, among others, reported that the latest data from the Office for National Statistics showed the number of deaths linked to hospital-acquired infections MRSA and C.difficile fell last year for the first time.
 
Inevitably, yet again this month, swine flu has completely dominated the health news landscape. Although there is a glimmer of hope that the media hysteria around this issue is dimming because there was a noticeable fall in the number of stories at the end of the month, compared to the beginning when there was complete domination.

Stories have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. They have included Britons being flown in private jets abroad for treatment if the pandemic hits, doctors ‘playing God’ with treatments, ‘Tamiflu’ tourists visiting the UK and leaving with precious supplies, school children being used as ‘guinea pigs’ for the vaccine, drug addicts getting the vaccine first, pensioners getting it last, 16 year olds manning the swine flu hotline and the list goes on.

But the good news was that most papers, including The Independent, Daily Mirror and Daily Telegraph, reported that health officials agreed that swine flu had peaked for now. Official figures released showed that the weekly consultation rate between doctors and patients suffering from flu-like infections had fallen to almost normal levels. Government scientists warn this is likely to be a temporary lull before a second outbreak occurs after schools re-open in September. We anticipate that swine flu will keep the number one slot in September.

To view the full version of the Aurora top 20, please click here

Tags: aurora top 20, Media relations