The NHS can't even test its own staff. Nor can it now source PPE. But that's not because the NHS didn't want to be able to do these things; it has not been allocated enough resources to keep it going properly in peacetime. In the past 8 years regional health trusts have gone from breaking even or being in profit to being hundreds of millions in debt mainly because of government funding cuts. Austerity meant cuts to the NHS and social services, libraries etc & etc. and we have had nigh-on a decade on defunding; first under Cameron, and then under both May and BoJo.
There is a bit of recent history that suffices as context. In the UK the NHS has only be allowed to do nowt. I think I mentioned on my blog some time ago that folk of a certain age could no longer be diagnosed for things which went outside cost considerations excepting cancer, heart disease, or dementia; the cost of care for which can be foisted onto family or taken from an estate post-mortem. Doctors were not diagnosing knee problems or back problems because it was too damn expensive.
In such an environment even planning for potential epidemic/pandemic mitigation is next-to-impossible, and that is not the health services fault given that we have a government department running it and it falls into the purview of both the budget, and Treasury oversight.
The last few governments have paid lip-service to the NHS while wanting to privatise it. Brexit was the main chance for that, but I'm afraid that's now a political impossibility.
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Date: 22/4/20 17:36 (UTC)There is a bit of recent history that suffices as context. In the UK the NHS has only be allowed to do nowt. I think I mentioned on my blog some time ago that folk of a certain age could no longer be diagnosed for things which went outside cost considerations excepting cancer, heart disease, or dementia; the cost of care for which can be foisted onto family or taken from an estate post-mortem. Doctors were not diagnosing knee problems or back problems because it was too damn expensive.
In such an environment even planning for potential epidemic/pandemic mitigation is next-to-impossible, and that is not the health services fault given that we have a government department running it and it falls into the purview of both the budget, and Treasury oversight.
The last few governments have paid lip-service to the NHS while wanting to privatise it. Brexit was the main chance for that, but I'm afraid that's now a political impossibility.