May has been a mixed month, meteorologically speaking. London has had its first sniff of Spring/Summer whereas on the other side of the world, natural disasters have sadly ravaged Myanmar and the Sichuan province of China. Healthcare and politics are once again intrinsically linked and thrust into the public eye with open global discussions on the delivery of aid to these areas and the level of access granted to the humanitarian agencies to minimise the devastation and loss of life.

Closer to home, the marriage between healthcare and politics has also come under scrutiny with MPs voting on two highly sensitive and emotional issues - reducing the upper time limit for abortions and whether to support stem cell research using human-animal embryos. Below we explore how these issues were covered in the media during May.

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Further to the political debates, two topics climbed up the Top 20 in May; abortion, as an individual topic, was seen for the first time and embryo research moved up from 16th to fourth spot.

Seven topics were re-entries, ranging from asthma to recreational drug use and its effects. As in April, new and re-entries accounted for 40% of May's chart and downward moving topics outnumbered upward movers by two to one. Among the upward movers, obesity climbed four places and smoking-related issues by two places.  Alcohol abuse/legislation, breast cancer and Alzheimer's disease all fell down the chart. Interestingly, despite the abortion debate, pregnancy stories fell from sixth to 13th place.

Below we explore some of this month's topics in more detail.

The abortion issue was a new entry straight into the number one spot, but considering it has been 20 years since this piece of social legislation was last debated in the House of Commons, it is not altogether surprising. Regardless of which side of the argument they stood, all MPs used highly emotive language, verbal imagery and in some cases personal stories to convey their thoughts and opinions during an impassioned debate. This generated some very interesting sound bites and in-depth articles throughout the consumer press. The outcome: A move to lower the upper time limit on abortion from 24 weeks was rejected by MPs.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill was drafted because of a feeling that the existing law did not take into consideration the scientific advances made in the last 20 years that can enable vital medical research into treatment for conditions such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer and heart disease. The issues debated caused bitter divisions of opinion resulting in more highly-charged and interestingly poised journalism. Perhaps because of the technical nature of this debate and the fact that this has been a low level yet long running topic, it didn't result in quite the volume of articles that the abortion issue created.

MRSA re-entered the chart in April and jumped up 11 places into third spot courtesy of both bad and, for a change, good news articles. The large majority of MRSA stories in the press centred around poor hospital hygiene practices and indeed the most interesting superbug story this month may well have hospital managers seriously revisiting their infection control measures. A 71-year-old Glaswegian woman who contracted the superbug after a heart operation in 2001 has been given the go-ahead to sue the NHS, bringing the first test case against them for allegedly giving her MRSA. The good news, however, is that a treatment for MRSA appears to be within grasp after a British scientific breakthrough. The gel is applied in a patient's nostril to kill the microbes as opposed to other drugs which just prevent them growing and breeding.

Obesity climbed four places this month thanks to many individual articles as opposed to a continuous story theme. Firstly, Suffolk Primary Care Trust is offering dangerously overweight people NHS-funded fitness sessions with a personal trainer. It is often reported that half the battle with beating obesity is to acknowledge the issue and then actively change habits and adopt a healthier lifestyle. In a survey conducted by health information website NetDoctor.co.uk, 70% of Britons admit to being overweight and not eating a balanced diet or consuming too much saturated fat and salt. However, sadly, most say that campaigns to encourage healthy eating have no effect on them. The obesity epidemic clearly needs to be addressed head on, but what can be done to move overweight people from the ‘acknowledgement' phase to the ‘changing lifestyle' phase?

And finally, the Aurora team needs very little encouragement to participate in any form of celebration and so we were delighted to discover that PR has its very own patron Saint! Yes indeed, Saint Bernardino of Siena is the blessed representative of communicators everywhere and on his Saint's day, 20th May, a glass was duly raised in his honour. What is Bernadino's connection with PR? Well apparently he was a Franciscan preacher whose oratory skills drew crowds of thousands. According to the gospel of Wikipedia, his success was claimed to be remarkable and enormous crowds came to hear him speak.

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Aurora strives to apply quantitative, qualitative and emotional understanding of health issues to client communication programmes. Dove-tailing informed PR activity with the media's appetite enables us to assist clients with communicating their vision.

To find out more, contact Neil Crump or Claire Eldridge on 020 7424 7940. 

The top 20 chart provides our interpretative snap-shot of health stories in the national press and is based upon a quantitative process. Analysis based on news from the 26 April to 25 May 2008.