2023-06-26 13:12:04
British leaders should be “seriously concerned” regarding the state of the UK’s health system, warns a report published on Monday, which compares this country to 19 others and warns in particular of high mortality for curable diseases. The NHS, the British public health system, which celebrates its 75th anniversary in early July, is going through a deep crisis, weakened by austerity policies and the consequences of the pandemic. He has been confronted for months with historic strikes by nurses, paramedics and doctors, who are demanding salary increases and better working conditions. The British face long waiting lists to access care.
The UK “performs worse than many of its peers on several measures, including life expectancy and deaths that might have been avoided with effective, timely healthcare (…) and health services. prevention”, explains the report published by the think tank King’s Fund. The country is in second to last place in terms of mortality for diseases qualified as curable (such as breast or colorectal cancers). Only the United States do worse while Australia, Japan and France are the best ranked.
Lack of personnel, equipment and beds
The UK also comes in at the bottom of the table for diseases labeled as preventable, such as lung cancer. Here too, the United States is ranked last. Japan and Italy come first. For stroke, the UK has the highest mortality rate at 30 days following admission to hospital. The Netherlands and Canada are at the top of the ranking. Separately, the UK has a “surprisingly low number of nurses and doctors per capita compared to its peers”, according to the report.
The country also lags behind in terms of equipment. It is last in the ranking for the number of scanners and MRIs, with 16.1 per million inhabitants, compared to 166.7 in Japan. The UK also has a relatively low number of hospital beds compared to the 19-country average, with 2.5 beds per 1,000 people, compared to an average of 3.2. The report comes as Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak visits healthcare facilities in central England to announce a new device to improve access to lung cancer screening.
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