Nhs

It seems, then, that this latest lockdown has been instigated simply to protect two very questionable institutions — the National Health Service and Christmas. Both have a certain historicity about them and were widely liked. Both, too, have become bloated and hideous caricatures of what they once were. There is a certain infantilism about the repeated demands to ‘save Christmas’ which conjures up the image of serious adults — Chris Whitty, for example, or Sir Patrick Vallance — hanging up their stockings on Christmas Eve and jumping up and down on the bed in excitement at five o’clock the following morning. There is no Santa Claus, Patrick. There is no

My last NHS scan showed a shadow on a rib. The scan report couldn’t decide between a new cancer metastasis or scarring from an old injury. The first would mean the cancer had moved into my skeleton and was on a winning streak. I have fractured ribs in sharp collisions with steering wheels more than once and cling strenuously to the old-scar hypothesis. The image showed a second suspicious blur. Something, possibly a tumour, was putting pressure on my left kidney. Since then I’ve been going around with a length of plastic tube inserted in my urethra to drain it. Until that point my cancer was just a word. Now

How much should we pay to save life? The question is often viewed as distasteful: you can’t put a price on human life. But resources are finite. Even if the only purpose of life was to prolong it for as long as possible, there would be limits to healthcare affordability. So if resources are limited, how can their application be made fairly? And how can this logic be applied in a pandemic? One element when establishing a fair method is to consider life years saved rather than lives saved. This recognises that someone of my age (55), who has already enjoyed two-thirds of his likely life span, should be a

A man without a mask appeared to be dying of Covid, or something quite like it, on the London to Guildford train. Hunched double in his seat across the aisle, he groaned as he coughed, gasped as he sneezed, and sniffed as a way of clearing the mess because he hadn’t got a tissue. Sans mask, sans handkerchief he spluttered and spattered. His capacity to ignore my stare was magnificent. I’m not a tolerant person, and when someone is sneezing at me during what is supposed to be a pandemic I cannot muster generosity. Sitting on the worn, red upholstery of the 1453 South Western train service from Waterloo, I

After driving around the hospital grounds in concentric circles until I was surely down a wormhole, I found the scanning unit. It was shoehorned down a narrow alley and had four parking spaces outside its door, all of them empty, but the sign above them was clear: ‘Private parking, wheel-clamping in operation.’ It did not say patient parking. Most likely, with a sign like that, it was staff parking. I looked around and realised I was stuck down a dead end. My only option was to reverse backwards, craning my neck around because the old Volvo long ago ceased to have functioning beepers. As my neck was the reason I

‘Hallo! You was callin’ us about appoint…MENT!’ said the lady at the scanning unit of my local hospital in broken English. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that when I received a letter bearing the logo of a private company informing me of the details of my forthcoming MRI, I got all excited, anticipating efficiency. Although I was having it done on the NHS, the appointment came through swiftly with no mention of the health service on the paperwork, which raised my expectations. I rang to confirm, but after holding for a while I was told to leave a message and someone would ring me back. A few hours later

The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust carries out some of the most complex and contentious clinical work in the NHS. It deals with children and young people who are experiencing discomfort over their gender identity, but is it raising patient safety concerns? Some of the children it sees go on to change their legal gender. Some receive physical treatment in the form of puberty-blocking medications. Some go on to have further treatments including cross-sex hormones and surgery. The service, which is heavily over-subscribed, is a divisive one. A number say it offers vital, even life-changing care to children in great distress and

When the media have gone large on the conclusions of an overpoweringly tedious report, one of the biggest favours a columnist can do for a readership is to read the source. Friends, you owe me. I will expect flowers and chocolate. For I have located Public Health England’s ‘Beyond the Data: Understanding the impact of Covid-19 on BAME communities’ and ploughed through the whole bloody thing. This is the report that produced headlines like the Guardian’s ‘Historical racism may be behind England’s higher BAME Covid-19 rate’. Channel 4 News hit the same black-and-brown-patients-are-dying-of-racism note, which conveniently chimes with the current hair-shirtery of Black Lives Matter. A bit too conveniently, I

Hong Kong’s future Sir: So we have a moral duty to protect the people of Hong Kong and guide them back to the golden world which existed before 1997 under British rule (‘Let them come’, 6 June)? Come off it. It is true that the hope behind the 1984 Joint Declaration was for HK to move gradually to stronger democratic forms, although under the direct authority of the government of the PRC, as it had been with the UK. What has destabilised Hong Kong and alarmed Beijing is digital grass-roots empowerment — the same thing that half the world’s governments are facing. In Hong Kong it appears in a particularly

Covid deaths Has Covid-19 evolved to become less deadly?— Global infections reached a new peak on 29 May, with 125,473. The daily average for the past seven days is 108,965, 36% higher than in the week beginning 14 April.— However, deaths peaked at 8,429 on 17 April. The daily total for the past seven days is 3,902, 43% lower than in the week beginning 14 April.Source: Worldometers Quiet hospitals How did NHS activity change in the last quarter of 2019/20 compared with a year earlier?Hospital admissions -9.6% Elective admissions -9.7%GP referrals -13.9% Other referrals -8.3%Source: NHS England Busy beaches Beaches were packed, leading to fears of social distancing. What are