Who will cure healthcare? The headache of the next British government

Who will fix the NHS’s problems? The public health system of the United Kingdomonce one of the great national prides, has become one of the biggest headaches that the next government must solve after the elections of July 4.

Citizen satisfaction with their health system has been falling in recent years to ridiculous levels due to the serious challenges it faces: strikes by resident doctors demanding a salary increase 35%shortage of qualified professionals after Brexit or huge delays in waiting lists.

Asked by EFE, Philip Banfield, chairman of the board of directors of the British Medical Association (BMA), says that if Labour comes to power – as everything indicates – and wants to grow the economy, his “The immediate priority must be to solve the health system and improve the health of the country.”

Banfield welcomes Labour’s Keir Starmer’s commitment to reducing waiting times in hospitals and healthcare centres, but stresses that this requires “support and investment in the workforce”.

Instead, he believes that the ‘tories’ are “full of ideas” Although the health union is, “I am rightly sceptical about how they will be implemented, given their track record over the past 14 years and the state they are leaving health services in.”

A difficult stage

In an interview with EFE, Jonathan Hedges, a resident doctor specialising in obstetrics and gynaecology at St George’s Hospital in London, laments that “the last decade has been very complicated due to Covid (…) and a period of extraordinary work for the health sector.”

“There is now an acute collapse in services, overwhelmed by the backlog of waiting lists, with patients not being treated or not being treated in the right way,” says.

Residents are currently on a new five-day strike to demand wage cuts to compensate for the loss of purchasing power in recent years due to inflation. Tony Lyons, an NHS Ambulance Service worker, believes it is necessary “a new party that cares about the NHS” and assures EFE that “Everyone is desperate to see change.”

Suleiman Suley, patient coordinator at UCLH University Hospital, said: “Resident doctors go on strike when they are unhappy with the government and feel that services are being neglected.”

Months of waiting for operations

In addition to the strikes, millions of people are having to wait months for routine operations such as knee replacements or cataracts. The latest official figures show the waiting lists reached 7.5 million at the end of March.

The ‘tories’ They plan to cut waiting times as one of their five priorities if they are re-elected, while the Labour Party aims to tackle the problem within five years by creating more appointments during the evenings and at weekends.

Other groups, such as the Liberal Democrats, advocate public investment in health and prevention.

The next government will also have to resolve the shortage of qualified staff, which has worsened after Brexit – which has interrupted the arrival of EU professionals – and which is stretching national resources to the limit and affecting staff morale.

The latest figures reveal that the NHS in England currently has more than 100,000 unfilled jobs, which is a 7% of the workforce.

Labour says it will create 7,500 new medical school places and 10,000 new nursing and midwifery posts a year, while Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform UK is promising to scrap student fees for resident doctors and nurses.

The next leader will also have to deal with the difficulty of making an appointment with a dentist or a family doctor.

Last April, more than three million people in England had to wait more than three weeks to see their family doctor and there is a deep crisis in the field of dentists, according to official data.

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