We must not neglect forgotten patients desperate for care
WITH the worst of the pandemic hopefully past us, our wonderful NHS is functioning at 40 per cent capacity and if patients don’t go to hospital for health checks we could face 50,000 early cancer deaths by the end of summer.
That’s the grim reality of focusing almost exclusively on battling Covid-19.
When Imperial College London predicted that 500,000 Britons could die from it, wards were cleared, operations cancelled and Nightingale hospitals built. Tragically some 42,000 people have died but that is long off the predicted number and far lower than the 165,000 people who die from cancer every year, according to Cancer Research UK. Or the 69,000 who pass away from dementia or the 170,000 from heart and circulatory diseases – 44,000 of those dying under the age of 75.
Yet all patients suffering from those illnesses have seen their hospital appointments drasti- cally cut or simply prefer not to turn up. Waiting lists have ballooned recently and could reach 10 million by the autumn.
“Thousands of people have early stage cancers that normally would be picked up and dealt with,” says cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora. If this iceberg of ill health is not dealt with promptly, he predicts there could be 100,000 premature cancer deaths this year.
EARLY on in the pandemic, hospital admissions for heart attacks dropped by half, amounting to 5,000 people a month not seeking attention for heart disease symptoms. By ignoring those early signs, they put themselves at greater risk of long-term heart damage, needing intensive care and dying too soon.
The cost to the NHS of not dealing early on with serious illnesses will be yet another burden on their overstretched resources.
It’s not only physical health that has worsened, but mental wellbeing too. Lockdown has exacerbated underlying mental health issues with 45 per cent of psychiatrists reporting a fall in patients attending routine appointments.
“Many of our patients have deteriorated or developed mental disorders as a direct result of the coronavirus disruption,” said one specialist surveyed.
Yet is it no surprise that hundreds of thousands of patients with serious health conditions are avoiding hospitals because they fear catching coronavirus? Their underlying health issues make them especially vulnerable to a virus that exploits weakened immune systems.
But now that the worst of the pandemic has peaked, it is time to turbocharge our hospitals and get them back to looking after the rest of us. If it is largely a matter of restoring confidence, then the BBC should stop scaring us to death and start running stories about how the NHS is readying itself to treat other patients safely.
In retrospect, it may well have been better to send Covid19 victims to specially designated hospitals and leave others untouched by the virus.
In Gloucestershire, at the start of the crisis, Cheltenham General was made a “green” hospital for less urgent cases with the nearby Gloucester a “red” hospital for emergencies and coronavirus patients. In the event fewer beds were needed in the 500-bed Gloucester Royal, but at least that meant less urgent patients, needing elective surgery, could enter Cheltenham General with confidence that virus sufferers were not in the same building.
This might well have been a better use of Nightingale hospitals, housing specialist treatment for Covid-19 sufferers, while general hospitals maintained virus-free services for everyone else. It is not too late to start establishing a similar system nationwide that reassures us most hospitals are now completely coronavirus free.
With hindsight we know also that the bed-clearing transfer of elderly patients to care homes was not a wise move. Not only did this cause unnecessary deaths but many families now fear sending their older loved ones to care homes.
RACHAEL Crook, cofounder of social care start-up Lifted, has devised an app to let families source care for older relatives at home. “We want to put people back in control of care options so they can stay in their own homes for longer,” she says.
It is time now to restore that sense of confidence across all care sectors to ensure our loved ones get the very best health care they deserve. Battling coronavirus has been a Herculean task that has shown our NHS at its very best but that effort must not be allowed to impact on the health of everyone else.
Our heroic doctors and nurses must get busy again looking after the rest of us.
‘It is time to turbocharge hospitals so they can look after the rest of us’