NHS FAILINGS COST 30,000 LIVES A YEAR!
Health minister blames ‘shocking underperformance’ for deaths
MORE than 30,000 people a year die too early because of failures in the NHS, the Government announced yesterday. Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told how tens of thousands died because of “shocking underperformance” in our hospitals.
He called for all middle aged people to be offered regular health checks to avoid the five big killers, cancer, heart disease, strokes, respiratory and liver disease.
Mr Hunt said: “Despite real progress in cutting deaths we remain a poor relative to our global cousins on many measures of health, something I want to change.
“For too long we have been lagging behind and I want the reformed health system to take up the challenge and turn this shocking underperformance around.”
Life expectancy in the UK increased by an average of 4.2 years to 79.9 years in the last 20 years, but in comparison to 19 other countries in Europe, the UK dropped from tenth to 14th in a league of life lost per 100,000.
Spending
But NHS spending has risen from £45billion in 1990 to £121billion in 2011, according to figures from the House of Commons library.
Deaths from Alzheimer’s disease, cirrhosis of the liver and drug abuse have increased but Britain saw the largest drop in death rates from heart disease.
Scientists compared the UK’s record for a range of important health indicators with that of 14 other EU countries, plus Canada, Australia, Norway and America.
Data was drawn from the Global Burden of Disease Study, published in 2010.
The results covered 259 diseases and injuries, and 67 risk factors or risk factor clusters.
Their findings, which were published in medical journal The Lancet, also showed the biggest lifestyle risks for illness and disease.
The worst was tobacco, which caused 12% of the disease burden, followed by high blood pressure, high body-mass or obesity, alcohol and poor diet and lack of physical activity.