A LOUTH GAA star could be hit with a lengthy ban from soccer, after lining out in a junior soccer league game under the name of a colleague from the county Gaelic team.

A GENERAL practitioner has been cleared of charge of conducting an internal examination on a woman for his sexual gratification by a Medical Council fitness to practice inquiry yesterday.

MORE than 20 doctors are currently receiving support from the Irish Medical Council (IMC) to cope with medical problems that could impact on their professional performance.

A SURGEON, who has agreed to be censured by the Medical Council for failing to provide a medical report for a teenage road traffic victim, said his patients were his primary concern, not the interests of the legal profession.

A PATHOLOGIST at the centre of a highly critical report that revealed a series of cancer misdiagnoses has been found guilty of professional misconduct but was not struck off the register.

A fitness to practice inquiry into allegations of “irresponsible” prescribing by a Cork GP was adjourned unexpectedly yesterday after it emerged she had failed to provide key patient medical notes to the hearing.

THIS victory in Saturday’s All-Ireland JFC semi-final nudged Cork into their fourth decider in the grade this decade, yet the bald statistic masks how close a shave this was for Mossie Barrett’s men.

PAURAIC SHANLEY landed an injury time point to secure a replay for Longford in the Leinster JFC final at Croke Park yesterday.

FRANCE and the Netherlands reacted swiftly on Saturday to a newly signed peace accord in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), with the latter announcing millions of euro in aid to help stabilise the troubled east.

A controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 have died because of the Iraq conflict, suggesting a far higher death toll than other estimates.

THERE is no evidence of an accident and emergency crisis and the number of people waiting on trolleys is due to failures throughout the hospital system, a new report has found.

MORE than 1,000 Congolese civilians a day are dying, nearly all from disease and malnutrition, due to a festering conflict that has killed 3.8 million people, an aid agency said yesterday.

DOCTORS are prescribing teenagers as young as 14 sleeping pills to cope with exam stress, according to the chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children.

PATIENTS will suffer and waiting lists will increase once junior doctors’ working hours are reduced, a leading surgeon has warned.

TOPPING the Budget wish list of health representatives is a plea to the Government to fulfil its promise to extend the medical card scheme to an extra 200,000 people.

DOCTORS’ representatives will tomorrow ask the Department of Health to tackle the growing shortage of family doctors.