Sunshine, Wimbledon, strawberries and cream - the great British summertime has arrived. Despite the odd tropical downpour, the Aurora team has donned their hats and flip flops to welcome the good weather and indulged in the occasional ice cream. Sadly, the sun did little to lift the spirits of Gordon Brown earlier in the month, with the fiasco surrounding the European elections and numerous ministers quitting the party. If that wasn't enough, The Big Brother house is full of political infighting as they battle for public support to stay in the house.

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While there were no new entries this month, there was a flurry of re-entries keeping the chart busy. Unsurprisingly, swine flu hogged the number one spot for the second month in a row, while skin cancer and smoking burnt their way into fifth and sixth place respectively. Cervical cancer, HIV/AIDS and pain also re-entered the chart, while recreational drugs reached a new high in sixteenth position. Erectile dysfunction rose to seventeenth place, followed by weight loss, arthritis and autism.

Skin cancer blistered into the chart with the news that the number of cases had doubled over the last twenty years. Cheap foreign holidays, sun beds and a reluctance to wear sunscreen are all to blame for binge-tanning at home and abroad. While the South West enjoys more hours of sunshine, beautiful countryside and beaches, they also have the highest incidence of skin cancer in the UK, and the highest death rate as a result.

Erectile dysfunction raised headlines this month as an impotence drug became available in high street Boots stores. The drug can only be prescribed following a 30-minute consultation with a pharmacist, despite research by Boots that found that 47 per cent of men would prefer to suffer in silence rather than discuss their erection problems. For those who prefer not to talk about the problem with a qualified healthcare professional, the internet is often their next port of call. However, the news that a fraudster made £3.4 million by selling fake and unlicensed anti-impotence drugs should deter men from putting their health at risk.

Swine flu was starting to become a ‘boar' for the second month in a row with the news that the UK reached pandemic status. An increasing number of people were contracting the virus without any traceable link to another infected person. Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist at Imperial College London who advises the Government and the WHO, said that swine flu was spreading so fast that “there is a level of community transmission we are unable to stop.” There was also a report in The Daily Mail that UK scientists had developed a machine that could wipe out swine flu. The purifier device - the size of a small briefcase - was 99 per cent effective in tests to kill airborne bacteria of the H1N1 virus. No further developments on this story emerged, so perhaps this machine won't save our bacon after all.

And finally, The Daily Telegraph reported that Heston Blumenthal has been given money by the Government to revamp hospital menus and re-excite older people about food again. While Aurora MD, Claire, is a Blumenthalophile, the rest of the team wondered whether the average patient would be chomping at the bit to try snail porridge, sardine sorbet and bacon and egg ice cream?

So, let's turn to the rev-counter to see what's been driving the health news in June:

The rev counter has been derailed by swine flu for the second month running. No one health institution or health driver lead the news this month, as swine flu continued to dominate column inches. The story has moved on from symptoms and how to prevent the spread of infection, to predictions of a pandemic as people come back from summer holidays and return to work and school. Perhaps the only story that has the power to bump swine flu off the top spot next month is the sad and untimely death of Michael Jackson. Watch this space…

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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 +44 (0) 20 7424 7940.

The top 20 chart provides our interpretative snapshot of health stories in the national press and is based upon a quantitative process. Analysis based on news from the 26 May to 25 June 2009.

© Aurora 2009

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