In brief

Calls to mental health helpline increase: The UK mental health charity Mind says that the number of calls to its helpline between October 2011 and April 2012 was nearly a third higher than in the same period in 2010-11. Twice as many people sought advice on issues of personal finance and employment than in 2008. Job insecurity, money worries, and poor working conditions are thought to be affecting people’s mental health.

Trust is fined for breach of data security: Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust has been fined £90 000 (€112 000; $142 000) by the UK information commissioner for mistakenly sending around 45 faxes containing sensitive data on 59 patients from the Pembridge palliative care unit to an unintended recipient between March and May 2011. The trust lacked guarantees that faxed information reached the right recipient and had failed to provide the necessary training and support to the person responsible for the breach.

MPs urge UK government to pay more to Global Fund: MPs on the parliamentary select committee on international development have called on the government to increase the £384m (€475m; $610m) it has pledged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria between 2012 and 2015. A year ago the government committed itself to increasing the fund, which is facing financial difficulties, but has neither delivered the money nor confirmed what the increase will be (www.parliament.uk/indcom).

WHO publishes new data on non-communicable diseases: A third of the world’s adults have raised blood pressure, one in 10 have diabetes, and one in eight are obese, says the World Health Organization’s World Health Statistics 2012 report.1 On the positive side, maternal deaths fell from more than 540 000 in 1990 to fewer than 290 000 in 2010, and deaths among children aged under 5 fell from 10 million in 2000 to 7.6 million in 2010. But only 34 countries (15% of the world’s population) produce high quality data on causes of death.

Diabetes prevalence in Germany rises by a half in nine years: Some 7.95 million people were treated in Germany for diabetes mellitus in 2009, up 49% from 5.36 million in 2000, says a University Hospital of Cologne study.2 Contributing factors include an ageing population, lack of exercise, and a rising prevalence of obesity, the study says.