Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is ailing. Horror stories from hospitals hit headlines every day. There are no beds and not enough doctors to treat patients. The overcrowding has left hospital staff with no choice but to treat patients in crowded corridors. Ambulance delays are routine. And the constant strikes have only made matters worse.
Almost every winter, the country’s treasured health service, which was started in 1948, is brought to its knees. But this time the situation looks grimmer than ever. The question everyone’s asking: Is the NHS collapsing?
Crumbling health infrastructure
The situation in the UK has been described as the worst NHS crisis since the service was established 75 years ago. The wait time for appointments and treatments has increased but when it comes to accidents and emergencies (A&E) the record is even more dismal.
The numbers are telling. According to NHS England, a record 54,532 people in December waited for more than 12 hours once arriving at A&E. The average wait for an ambulance for category two patients, which includes suspected strokes or heart attacks, is more than 90 minutes. The target time is 18 minutes, reports AFP. There were 1,474 more deaths in the week ending 30 December than the five-year average, a rise of 20 per cent.
Graphic: Pranay Bhardwaj
Hospitals in the UK are so overcrowded that a British doctor said that the conditions in NHS are worse than in nations with poor medical infrastructure like war-hit Ukraine.
Dr Paul Ransom, who works part-time with a UK hospital and carries out humanitarian work overseas, in a letter to the newspaper The Argus said that hospitals in Sussex, like the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, had overflowing corridors and staff who were “at their wits’ end”.
“Sometimes I feel guilty at seeing my NHS colleagues trying to keep patients safe and sometimes even keep them alive in conditions that are worse than those I see in many hospitals I work overseas,” he wrote in the letter. “I have worked in many places like Ukraine, Georgia, Sri Lanka, and Zimbabwe but very rarely saw corridors overflowing with patients waiting for a cubicle.”
In February, more strikes are planned in the UK, threatening fresh disruption for patients in the creaking state-run health service. AFP
Patients and their families have no choice but to plead with doctors and nurses. In Rotherham, northern England, young Yusuf’s uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, said they were told there were no beds and not enough doctors. “They kept saying to us, ‘we’ve got one doctor. What do you want us to do? We’ve got no beds available,” he told the British media.
Also read: ‘Winter of Discontent’: Why UK has been hit by a wave of strikes
The staffing crisis is so severe that people have died because they did not receive timely medical attention. Matthew Simpson, who is from Hull in northern England, lost his wife Teresa after they waited for help for 17 hours. She had diabetes and muscle-wasting disease myotonic dystrophy. The couple fell asleep waiting for paramedics and when they arrived he was attempting to resuscitate her. “One hundred per cent I believe that if they got to my wife in six hours she would still be here,” he told Sky News.
These are not isolated cases. Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told Times Radio, “We think somewhere between 300 and 500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week… We cannot continue like this.”
The NHS is on the verge of collapse. The average wait for an ambulance for category two patients, which includes suspected strokes or heart attacks, is more than 90 minutes. The target is 18. AP
The strikes and staffing problem
Healthcare workers in the UK are unhappy. Many have quit and others are striking work. Ambulance staff and nurses have held several strikes over poor pay and working conditions and more are expected in the coming weeks.
A walkout by ambulance workers in the coming month is predicted to be the biggest day of stoppages in the history of the NHS. On 6 February close to 40,000 nurses from the Royal College of Nursing, a trade union, will strike work, according to a report in The Guardian.
There are concerns that services could come to a standstill forcing non-urgent operations to be cancelled so that the emergency wings of hospitals are not affected because of the lack of health workers.
According to Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, “it could be the biggest day of industrial action the NHS has ever seen”.
Ahead of last month’s strike, NHS Confederation and NHS Providers, which represents health service organisations in the UK, wrote to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak with concerns for patient safety. “The fear of NHS leaders is that the risk to patients is only going to get worse with future strikes planned,” Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, warned.
Disgruntled staff is worrying news as even vacancies in the NHS are alarming. According to a CNN report, as of last September, there were 133,000 open positions.
The UK takes great pride in the NHS. But the healthcare system needs urgent reform. AP
The COVID-19-led chaos
During the pandemic, the NHS diverted all its strength to treat patients hit by the coronavirus. As other practices were put on hold, the backlog increased manifold, CNN reports.
According to October 2022 data analysis of the British Medical Association, a record high of almost 7.21 million people were waiting for treatment. “410,983 patients waiting over a year for treatment, including estimates for missing data – which is around 265 times the 1,537 people waiting over a year pre-pandemic in October 2019. The average waiting time is 13.9 weeks. significantly higher than the pre-COVID duration,” it says.
This winter, the NHS faces more burden amid the “twindemic”, COVID-19 and the rising cases of flu.While other nations have also been fighting the pandemic, the UK healthcare service has been the worst hit.
Members of the Royal College of Nursing stand by the statue of nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale, on the picket line near the Florence Nightingale Community Hospital in Derby, England on 18 January, as they take industrial action over pay. On 6 February, 40,000 more nurses will go on strike. AP
Before the pandemic…
The pandemic alone cannot be blamed. The collapse of the NHS has been in the making for far too long. According to a report in Telegraph UK, the country is estimated to have one of the highest rates of avoidable rates in western Europe even before the pandemic. Its waiting list even before COVID-19 hit was some of the worst compared to European nations.
An analysis by Liberal Democrats shows a steep rise in delays from A&E to being admitted to hospitals. The latest figures reveal a big jump in 12-hour delays, from 1,306 in 2015 to 8,270 in 2019, before the pandemic hit.
Saving the NHS
The NHS, arguably the most famous health service in the world, has been a source of pride for Britain. It has been dubbed the “envy of the world”. At the Olympic opening ceremony in London in 2012, homage was paid to it. But since then things have gone downhill.
The cost of the NHS keeps rising. In the mid-1950s, shortly after the service was created, it cost two per cent of the GDP. By 2019, it was 10.2 per cent, according to a Bloomberg report. UK’s fiscal watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility, estimates that it will cost 13.8 per cent of the GDP by 2067.
Ambulance workers hold placards on the picket line outside the London Ambulance Service NHS Trust control room in Waterloo, London, Monday. UK ambulance workers have gone on strike in an ongoing dispute with the government over pay. PA via AP
Sajid Javed, former UK health secretary, wrote in The Times recently that “the 75-year-old model of the NHS is unsustainable”. Saying that his opinion might be unpopular, he suggested that patients should start paying for General Practitioner (GP) appointments, and A&E visits.
The NHS needs urgent changes which could include rationing non-urgent elective care to direct wealthier patients toward the private sector. One pressing reform is to link the NHS better with social and community care, where many elderly patients are eventually discharged to, according to Bloomberg.
“New drugs cause financial strain everywhere, and populations grow older and sicker in many advanced economies. But the NHS tries to absorb all those costs in a centralized, taxpayer-funded model within a society that has voted for low-tax government for much of the past 40 years,” the article says.
While Rishi Sunak has promised to get the waiting list down, he has not announced any plans for saving the crumbling healthcare system. Doctors have called the prime minister “delusional” for denying the crisis.
The NHS, as it exists, cannot survive. And the first step is for the government to acknowledge that.
With inputs from agencies
Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News,India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.