With staff quitting over conditions and a recruitment black hole, a pay rise for nurses is the least Sajid Javid should do
NHS politics tends to focus on easily measured inputs: how many beds have been cut as a result of austerity, how many nurses’ and doctors’ posts are empty, the lack of ambulances, MRI scanners and hospital repairs. But the ultimate output measure is how many people die needlessly as a result of these things.
An alarming number of excess deaths among people who were not suffering from Covid-19, analysed this week by the Financial Times, suggests the sheer magnitude of the current NHS crisis. The analysis finds that 2,047 more people died this year in the week ending 12 November than during the same period between 2015 and 2019, but only 1,197 of those people had Covid-19 on their death certificates. That’s just one week. This “raises the possibility that since the summer more people have been losing their lives as a result of the strains on the NHS or lack of early diagnosis of serious illness”. Cardiovascular disease and strokes are the most frequent causes of extra deaths, where every minute counts.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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