Huge hiring announcements, €3 billion in investments… Despite this progress, a very detailed report warns of the overall poor health of the UK healthcare sector.
This is one of the UK government’s current priorities: restoring healthcare. The government has just announced what it calls a “historic” plan to recruit 300,000 people over the next 15 years to tackle chronic staff shortages. This represents an investment of almost three billion euros to also solve the sector’s serious difficulties.
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So many announcements have been made while a disturbing report has just come out: people in the UK are dying of cancer and heart disease earlier than other rich countries, according to this very detailed study by the King’s Fund. So this document compares the health services of 19 countries and the result is very bad for the British. This leads to preventable deaths: people who have an accident and do not survive their injuries due to lack of care, or who suffer from diseases that we know how to treat but who do not receive the right treatment in time or are diagnosed too late .
In these 118 pages we learn that the UK lags far behind, far from France, for example, in the effectiveness of its health services, particularly when it comes to prevention. In the event of a stroke or heart attack, the risk of death is higher here than in Portugal, Denmark or the Netherlands. Only the US does less well. Another factor: the percentage of doctors in the total population is lower in the UK than in New Zealand, Belgium, Sweden or Germany. And when it comes to investment in public health, the country is one of the bottom performers, far behind Austria, for example.
anger and despair
A survey that is worrying for patients, of whom more than seven and a half million are waiting for an appointment, but also for nursing staff, who vacillate between despair and anger, such as that of the interns who will go on strike five days this month . never seen They want salary increases and are imitated by the doctors a few days later for 48 hours of action with the same demand. Strikes that will profoundly disrupt an already difficult service.
And then the nursing staff suffers. The latest absenteeism figures prove it: In 2022, this corresponds to the sick leave of 75,000 employees. Main causes: mental problems (especially overwork, depression), flu, infectious diseases, respiratory problems. Never before have there been so many work interruptions for these reasons.
The nursing staff cannot digest the time after the pandemic. The Covid waves have rolled over him several times. There were many political promises for better working conditions and more jobs. So far without effect. On the contrary, it’s a real blood loss to public health. Many departures, difficult to replace. This is a sector that is no longer attractive and all this news is obviously not helping.