Patients deserve to take priority

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the Government urged everyone to ‘ Stay at home, protect the NhS, save lives’.

It’s now becoming apparent that our determination to protect the NhS may result in the eventual deaths of many thousands of people who failed to get the diagnosis and treatment they needed during lockdown.

A report by the Department of health and Social Care estimates that more years of life — known as Qalys or ‘quality-adjusted life years’ — will be lost as result of lockdown than to Covid-19. (A Qaly is equivalent to one year in perfect health.)

We need to do everything we can to mitigate this while we can. But this week senior doctors said that many patients will have to wait until 2022 to see an NhS consultant because of the backlog. there are around 300,000 people waiting for knee and hip operations, yet surgical wards still resemble a ‘medical version of the Mary Celeste’, according to one orthopaedic surgeon.

My friend who is a knee surgeon echoes this. She complains that she is left twiddling her thumbs while her waiting lists continue to grow. All her attempts to start operating again are being thwarted by managers still twitchy about a ‘second wave’.

I predict that the public won’t take much more of this dithering. I know from what I see and hear that many are starting to feel neglected and forgotten by the NhS — the NhS, let’s not forget, that they clapped for every thursday night for ten weeks through lockdown.

Now, with the crisis passed, those who run the health service seem more concerned with protecting it than caring for patients. the pressure is on to get schools, universities and the economy up and running. Shouldn’t that apply to them, too?

Yes, there’s a risk that the virus might surge again — but this ultra-cautious approach is costing lives and causing misery, too.