Sara Menai, UK correspondent 10:10, 24 August 2024
Sixty-two days is the maximum time that should elapse in the UK between the time a hospital receives a referral for care and the time a patient begins treatment. But new figures from the Office for National Statistics show that waiting times for patients have more than tripled in the last 12 years.
It is one of the institutions dear to the hearts of the British. Designed to be one of the pillars of post-war society, 76 years after its creation, the NHS, the public health system, is going through an unprecedented crisis. As a result, in England, the percentage of cancer patients who wait longer than the recommended time between referral to an oncologist and the start of treatment has increased from 11% in 2012 to more than 33% of patients today.
Training and availability
The causes are delays in care, waiting lists of several months in hospitals and exhaustion of healthcare staff. In June, in the middle of the campaign for the general elections, Keir Starmer, now Prime Minister, said the system was on its knees… He promised his government would get it back on its feet.
“My wife works in our local hospital and my sister and mother were nurses, so the NHS runs through my family. That’s why the Labour government will train a new generation of doctors and nurses so we can get people appointments and treat and care for them on time,” he said.
Training new caregivers and allowing 2 million additional hospital appointments per year, this is the promise of the British Prime Minister. The question of financing remains, which this army has not yet fully answered.
