Brits are being warned today is their “last chance to get protected” against the H3N2 superflu surge, which shows no sign of peaking ahead of Christmas.

While most people who have the flu will recover at home, at-risk groups such as young children and people over the age of 65 can become severely ill, meaning they end up in hospital.

Last week, an average of 2,660 patients were in hospital with the bug each day – the highest ever for this time of year and 55 per cent up on last week.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/37599016/school-cancels-christmas-families-vaccine-warning-superflu-nhs-chaos/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOn4vNleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEe82fYPycNaUXidtW5mOVLt7UmvgkPvzosqUxHryVoZqBeReKolnocmLOdZgU_aem_ibO_MPRn7eQ6c9shIhbhvQ

The post WINTER CRISIS Patients treated in CUPBOARDS in NHS ‘superflu’ chaos as docs warn ‘last chance’ to get vaccine before H3N2 peak first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Record numbers of people are paying for private healthcare, spending up to £3,200 on having a cataract removed and £15,075 on a new hip, amid growing frustration at NHS waiting lists.

Across the UK last year 272,000 people used their own funds to cover the cost of having an operation or diagnostic procedure at a private hospital. That was up from 262,000 the year before and a sharp rise on the 199,000 who did so in 2019, the year before the Covid pandemic struck.

Private hospitals also set another record during 2022 by treating 820,000 inpatients and day case patients overall – more than in any previous year, according to figures from the Private Healthcare Information Network (PHIN), a specialist data collection organisation that tracks activity in the sector.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/24/record-rise-in-people-using-private-healthcare-amid-nhs-frustration

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

[Disclaimer]

The post Record rise in people using private healthcare amid NHS frustration first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Tens of thousands of nurses and ambulance staff walked off the job in the U.K. on Monday in what unions called the biggest strike in the history of the country’s public health system.

The walkout is the latest in a wave of strikes that has disrupted Britons’ lives for months, as workers — especially in the public sector — demand pay raises to keep pace with double-digit inflation. Teachers, train drivers, airport baggage handlers, border staff, driving instructors, bus drivers and postal workers also have all walked off their jobs in recent months to demand higher pay.

Teachers, health workers and many others say their wages have fallen in real terms over the last decade, and a cost-of-living crisis fueled by sharply rising food and energy prices has left many struggling to pay their bills.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/thousands-uk-nurses-ambulance-staff-walk-public-health-system-strike

__________________________________________________________________

[Disclaimer]

The post Thousands of UK nurses, ambulance staff walk out in public health system strike first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM), Dr. Adrian Boyle, told Times Radio: “What we’re seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300–500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week. We need to actually get a grip of this.”

More than a dozen NHS trusts and ambulance services declared critical incidents over the Christmas and New Year period, and one in five ambulance patients in England waited more than an hour to be admitted to hospital.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theepochtimes.com/uk-government-urged-to-get-a-grip-on-nhs-emergency-care-amid-reports-of-hundreds-of-deaths_4956690.html

__________________________________________________________________

[Disclaimer]

The post UK Government Urged to ‘Get a Grip’ on NHS Emergency Care Amid Reports of Hundreds of Deaths first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Britons should wear face coverings in enclosed public places and workers in England will be “actively encouraged” to return to work if they cannot work from home, according to new advice laid out by Prime Minister Boris Johnson set to come into effect Wednesday.

Johnson described the steps as part of the country’s “first careful measures” to lift the coronavirus lockdown. There will no longer be a limit on how much time people can spend exercising outside in England, and they can also meet someone from another household outside while observing social distancing.

The easing of restrictions is the first phase of a plan that would see schools and non-essential shops remain closed until June at the earliest, and bars and restaurants potentially reopening in July, provided there is no rise in infections. “Our challenge now is to find a way forward that preserves our hard-won gains, while easing the burden of the lockdown,” Johnson told Parliament on Monday.

The plans, part of a 60-page government document released Monday, were welcomed by some in the country who had called for a prompt reopening of the economy.

But they were also quickly condemned as both confusing and inappropriate by many others. While other European countries have offered clear roadmaps for moving out of lockdown, the U.K. government’s messaging has been mixed, experts say. Britain has the world’s second-highest confirmed the coronavirus death toll, at 32,141, and the worst in Europe. Some epidemiologists said the decision seemed to be based more on economics than public health and risks a new spike in infections.

Mixed messages?

Johnson gave a press conference on Monday from a podium bearing the words “stay alert, control the virus, save lives” — the new government slogan, replacing the one used since the start of the pandemic, which read “stay home, protect the NHS [National Health Service], save lives.”

Divisions were immediately apparent. The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — all nations within the United Kingdom with the power to set their own health policy — said many of the relaxed measures would not apply outside of England, including the advice that people should return to work.

Keep up to date with our daily coronavirus newsletter by clicking here.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon criticized Johnson for retiring “stay home” from the government’s official messaging. She said her government would not be doing the same because it would be “catastrophic” to do so. “I am particularly not prepared to [drop] it in favor of a message that is vague and imprecise,” she said at a press conference on Monday.

Mayors of cities in England raised concerns too. “I don’t feel it’s right for the north of England right now,” Andy Burnham, the opposition Labour Party mayor of Greater Manchester, told TIME on Tuesday. Burnham, who was the U.K.’s Health Secretary during the swine flu epidemic of 2009, also criticized Johnson’s movement away from the “stay home” message. “The move to this new messaging exposes the North of England to greater levels of risk,” he said.

“I didn’t like the way it was done, because it was announced on a Sunday night without any meaningful consultation with us,” Burnham added. “Obviously a change in messaging of that nature has a direct impact on policing, on transport, and it’s very difficult to hear that on a Sunday night without being able to plan ahead for the impact that change will have on our city region.”

Trade unions also raised concerns about the safety of people who the government now says should return to work. In his statement on Monday, Johnson urged individuals to “talk to their employers” about their safety and individual circumstances. But the government only released sector-specific guidance on how to make sure safe measures were in place on Tuesday, less than a day before people were “urged” to go back to work.

“[It is] impossible to act on new rules overnight,” wrote Frances O’Grady, head of the Trades Union Congress, a large grouping of unions, on Twitter. “This isn’t how to ensure a safe, careful return to work outside the home,” she added.

“Some people are being put under pressure to return to work,” Burnham tells TIME. “I called for a safety-led release from lockdown, and I don’t think this equates to that.”

Listening to the science?

Speaking to parliament on Monday, Johnson said his government “will be driven not by hope or economic revival as an end in itself, but by data, and science and public health.”

The government’s new plans rely on keeping the reproduction number (how many people the average infected person infects, also known as “R”) below one. If that number, currently between 0.5 and 0.9, rises above one, the government says it could be forced to reimpose lockdown measures.

But some public health experts challenged the government line that the new government advice stems from listening to science, data, and public health experts. “The wording stems from a particular kind of policy drive, which is to try to get people back to work,” says Robert West, a professor of health psychology at University College London. “If the government genuinely thinks this kind of messaging can be enacted without increasing the infection rate, they’re simply not listening to the science.”

That’s because West says, the reproduction number is impossible to know until several days, if not weeks, after the fact. “The government says it can monitor this, and if it sees R going up it will reverse this policy. The problem is, as we know from the early stage of the pandemic, you won’t know whether that’s happening until it’s too late.” In Germany, which eased its lockdown earlier this month when R dropped to 0.65, politicians are now warning measures may have to be reimposed after the figure increased to 1.1.

The U.K’s current R-value is estimated by the government to be between 0.5 and 0.9, a lower-resolution figure than Germany’s largely because of the differences in testing for COVID-19 between the two countries. Germany has been testing more than 100,000 people per day for months, giving it a better idea of the exact scale of the disease. By contrast, the U.K. has struggled to roll out large-scale testing. A shortage of tests meant that for months, only the most severe cases could be tested, with official government advice telling people with mild symptoms to remain at home without getting a test. That is starting to change now. Nevertheless, the government missed its original target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April and remains a long way away from the new target set by Johnson of 200,000 daily tests by the end of May.

“At this stage, you’re in a huge amount of uncertainty,” says West. “We haven’t got the comprehensive testing of even large random samples which you would need.”

Another problem is that R likely varies wildly across different parts of the U.K., where regional outbreaks are proceeding at different paces. Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, which has one of the highest levels of new cases in England, is calling on the government to release regional R numbers, which it is not currently doing. “My worry is that the changes are driven more by some parts of the country than others,” he says. I don’t think people understand the level of [regional] difference. We believe if the public could see the R level more clearly, they would make their own judgments.”

Ultimately, says West, governments will be judged by their level of foresight in dealing with the coronavirus. “One of the biggest things you have to do in an epidemic like this is to shoot ahead of the moving target,” he says. “And all through this crisis, the government has been shooting directly at the target and missing.”

Please send any tips, leads, and stories to virus@time.com.

Source: https://time.com/5835793/uk-reopening-coronavirus/

The post ‘Not Listening to the Science.’ Experts Criticize the British Government’s Plan to Ease Coronavirus Lockdown first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Nearly a quarter of a million British patients have been waiting more than six months to receive planned medical treatment from the National Health Service, according to a recent report from the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 36,000 have been in treatment queues for nine months or more.

Long waits for care are endemic to government-run, single-payer systems like the NHS. Yet some U.S. lawmakers want to import that model from across the pond. That would be a massive blunder.

Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. That’s well below the country’s goal of treating 95% of patients within four hours — a target the NHS hasn’t hit since 2015.

Now, instead of cutting wait times, the NHS is looking to scrap the goal.

Wait times for cancer treatment — where timeliness can be a matter of life and death — are also far too lengthy. According to January NHS England data, almost 25% of cancer patients didn’t start treatment on time despite an urgent referral by their primary care doctor. That’s the worst performance since records began in 2009.

And keep in mind that “on time” for the NHS is already 62 days after referral.

Unsurprisingly, British cancer patients fare worse than those in the United States. Only 81% of breast cancer patients in the United Kingdom live at least five years after diagnosis, compared to 89% in the United States. Just 83% of patients in the United Kingdom live five years after a prostate cancer diagnosis, versus 97% here in America.

The NHS also routinely denies patients access to treatment. More than half of NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups, which plan and commission health services within their local regions, are rationing cataract surgery. They call it a procedure of “limited clinical value.”

It’s hard to see how a surgery that can prevent blindness is of limited clinical value. Delaying surgery can cause patients’ vision to worsen — and thus put them at risk of falls or being unable to conduct basic daily activities.

“It’s shocking that access to this life-changing surgery is being unnecessarily restricted,” said Helen Lee, a health policy manager at the Royal National Institute of Blind People.

Many Clinical Commissioning Groups are also rationing hip and knee replacements, glucose monitors for diabetes patients, and hernia surgery by placing the same “limited clinical value” label on them.

Patients face long wait times and rationing of care in part because the NHS can’t attract nearly enough medical professionals to meet demand. At the end of 2018, more than 39,000 nursing spots were unfilled. That’s a vacancy rate of more than 10%. Among medical staff, nearly 9,000 posts were unoccupied.

These shortages could explode in the years to come. In 2018, the Royal College of General Practitioners found that more than 750 practices could close within the next five years, largely because heavy workloads are pushing older doctors to retire early.

The NHS recently announced that, in a desperate attempt to shore up its doctor workforce, it would pay British general practitioners working abroad more than $24,000 in “relocation support” to come back to the country. The Service is also trying to encourage doctors to come out of retirement.

Great Britain’s health crisis is the inevitable outcome of a system where government edicts, not supply and demand, determine where scarce resources are allocated.

Yet some lawmakers are gunning to implement precisely such a system in the United States. The bulk of the Democratic Party’s field of presidential candidates — including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren — co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2017 “Medicare for All” bill. That plan would abolish private insurance and put all Americans on a single government-run plan that covers nearly all medical services — including hospital and doctor visits, prescription medication, and dental and vision care.

Even Great Britain’s system of socialized medicine doesn’t ban private insurance.

Meanwhile, in the House, Representative Pramila Jayapal and more than 100 of her colleagues have offered a Medicare for All bill of their own. The proposal is very similar to Senator Sanders’s 2017 measure but even more generous. It would transition the entire country to government care in two years, rather than Sanders’s four. It would also create a new long-term care entitlement that Senator Sanders is sure to add to his next Medicare for All bill, which should be released soon.

Britons face long waits for poor care under their country’s single-payer system. That’s not the sort of healthcare model the American people are looking for.

Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care (Encounter 2018). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypipes/2019/04/01/britains-version-of-medicare-for-all-is-collapsing/#397dd8ed36b8

The post Britain’s Version Of ‘Medicare For All’ Is Struggling With Long Waits For Care first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.