Babak Belurs

Selasa, 03 Januari 2023

NHS: Government urged to take action over pressures - BBC

Ambulance outside The Royal London Hospital

By Charley Adams

BBC News

Ministers are under mounting pressure to respond to "intolerable and unsustainable" pressure facing the NHS.

Senior doctors described the NHS as on a knife edge, with some A&Es in a "complete state of crisis".

Labour criticised the government's management of the health service, while the Liberal Democrats called for Parliament to be recalled early.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper said he recognised staff were under "tremendous pressure".

But he said the government had offered more resources to the NHS and social care to help services cope.

Hospitals are experiencing soaring demand, which experts believe is in part driven by winter illnesses like flu and Covid.

Some 13% of hospital beds in England are filled with people with Covid or flu, NHS England figures showed.

In some places, like Shropshire and Gloucestershire, people are being advised to only visit A&E in extreme circumstances.

In recent days, a number of hospitals have declared critical incidents suggesting they cannot function as usual due to extraordinary pressure.

According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), the NHS is facing the worst winter for A&E waits on record.

Labour's shadow health secretary Wes Streeting said it was "completely inexplicable" that no government ministers had "raised their head or shown their face to say exactly what they are doing to grip this crisis".

He claimed the NHS was "actively deterring" people from going to A&E "because they are overwhelmed".

"And I think that's the sense of jeopardy which is frightening so many people across the country," he told BBC Radio 4's PM programme.

Lib Dem MP Daisy Cooper said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak "must declare a major incident".

"This is a national crisis and the country will never forgive the government if they refuse to recall Parliament."

MPs are due back at Westminster next Monday following their Christmas break.

BBC graph shows a steep rise in the number of patients in hospital with flu in England from 15 Nov to 25 Dec

Prof Phil Banfield, chairman of the British Medical Association, which represents doctors, called on the government to "step up and take immediate action".

He said the survival of Britain's health service was on a knife edge and claimed patients were needlessly dying because of a political choice.

He described the current situation in the NHS as "intolerable and unsustainable".

NHS England chief strategy officer Chris Hopson urged caution when asked about people who may be dying as a result of issues in the health service.

He warned against "jumping to conclusions about excess mortality rates and their cause without a really full and detailed look at the evidence".

Stay home advice

Amid rising cases of flu, Covid and strep A, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) has issued advice urging people to stay home if unwell, and wear a mask if they have to go out.

Prof Susan Hopkins, the UKHSA's chief medical adviser, also asked parents to keep children off school if they are unwell and have a fever.

Graphic showing the delays facing patients this winter

A Department for Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "NHS staff do an incredible job and we recognise the pressures the NHS is facing following the impact of the pandemic.

"That's why we've backed the NHS and social care with up to £14.1bn additional funding over the next two years and this winter we have provided an extra £500m to speed up hospital discharge and free up beds.

"We also awarded a 9.3% pay rise to the lowest earners in the NHS last year.

"The health secretary and ministers have met with unions several times and have been clear their door remains open to further discuss how we can work together to improve the working lives of NHS staff."

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2023-01-03 07:59:23Z
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Senin, 02 Januari 2023

NHS under more pressure now than at peak of COVID-19 pandemic, leading doctor says - Sky News

Pressure on the NHS is worse now than it was at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a leading doctor has said.

Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said "urgent action" is required to bring the NHS back from the brink.

Speaking to Sky News, he said the National Health Service is under the most pressure it has ever experienced, including difficult winter periods.

"There has never been a greater recognition amongst all staff that our current situation is worse than it has ever been," Dr Tim Cooksley said.

"And I know that people watching this will say, 'well every winter you have doctors on that say that this winter is terrible, that it's normal winter pressures'.

"But there is a complete acceptance from all colleagues now that this is different from all previous winters - and we need urgent action now."

He added: "This situation is much worse than we experienced under the COVID pandemic at its peak.

"And so we need to think carefully about how we can manage this and I think we need some urgent actions."

The head of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts and healthcare leaders, said most of the health service was under "unbearable strain".

Its chief executive Matthew Taylor told Sky News: "I speak to NHS leaders every day and a lot of them, if not most of them, say this is the toughest winter they've ever dealt with. We cannot go on like this.

"Most parts of the health service are under an unbearable strain and that does mean that we're not able to provide service as usual.

"We have to focus all our energies on the most urgent and intense needs, and that's why you're seeing the declaration of critical incidents in so many places."

Sky News understands that at least six hospital trusts are currently dealing with critical incidents, which means they cannot function as usual due to extraordinary pressure.

These critical incidents cover Derbyshire, Nottingham, Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Buckinghamshire and Staffordshire.

And at least 55 NHS trusts have publicly stated they are struggling to cope with the demand for their services.

The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Adrian Boyle, said on New Year's Day that between 300 and 500 people are dying each week because of delays in emergency care.

He added that a severe flu outbreak, made worse by a lack of immunity in people due to COVID isolation measures, has meant that bed occupancy is at a record level.

Nurses also went on strike over a dispute about pay and conditions for two days in December as did paramedics, and the British Medical Association said it will ballot junior doctors this month.

NHS pressures 'manifesting in different ways'

Meanwhile, another leading health official, Saffron Cordery, said the current pressure on the NHS is "equivalent" to that of the early stage of the pandemic.

Ms Cordery, who is interim chief executive of NHS Providers, said that the pressure is coming from various directions, such as staff shortages, lack of investment, a worn-out workforce and a backlog of operations, as well as a continuation of COVID and flu cases.

"I think we are seeing equivalent levels of pressure, they are just manifesting in different ways," she told PA news agency.

She said the NHS had to deal with "tens of thousands of people coming through hospital doors with a contagious disease" during the pandemic and were forced to give "over nearly every hospital bed to COVID patients".

"What we know now, and I think perhaps it's a more challenging situation, is that we've still got that coming through the door but then we've also got the legacy of COVID, which is a worn-out workforce, we've got even higher levels of staff shortages and vacancies, we're up to 133,000 across the NHS now," Ms Cordery added.

Ms Cordery also said the lack of capital investment in the NHS means it is "much less efficient".

"One of the things we have called for, and we are seeing small steps towards this but I think we need an even greater commitment to it, is a fully costed, fully funded workforce plan for the NHS so that we work out precisely what's needed," she said.

She continued: "If I did have a silver bullet that might solve a significant chunk of this it would be the investment across local government as well as the NHS and the investment in social care, in public health and in prevention because it's the denudation of those services which has had a massive impact on the NHS."

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2023-01-01 23:16:15Z
1720648017

Millions of Britons would find it hard or impossible to cover an extra £20 in monthly expenditure - Sky News

More than a third of adults in the UK would find it difficult or impossible to cover a £20 increase in their monthly expenditure, according to new research.

Citizens Advice commissioned a survey of 2,000 adults between 5 and 9 December and found that one in four would find it somewhat difficult to cover the increase, 7% would find it very difficult and 4% would find it impossible.

Also among those who would find the extra cost difficult or impossible were 58% of those on benefits, 57% of those using pre-payment meters for their energy supply, and 47% of people of colour.

Citizens Advice chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty said: "Millions of households are at financial breaking point: running down savings, going without bare essentials and turning to food banks to get by.

"We're already seeing record numbers of people coming to us for crisis support and this research shows people simply cannot cut back any further.

"Current government support is a sticking plaster which is quickly being exhausted due to the increased pressures people are facing.

"Without further targeted intervention, we risk another year of despair for millions of people."

The survey also found that a third of people have had to dip into their savings in the last three months to get by, and more than half of them had either run out of savings or expect to do so in the next three months.

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Britain is witnessing the worst squeeze on incomes in a generation, as struggling households are hit by soaring energy costs and rocketing inflation.

Citizens Advice said it helped a record number of people in December, assisting them in getting emergency grants and referring them to food banks.

Almost three in 10 of those surveyed said they are losing sleep at least once a week because they are worried about their finances.

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2023-01-02 03:39:48Z
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Minggu, 01 Januari 2023