As 7 million people wait for treatment and nurses prepare to strike, the government desperately tries to deflect the blame
This is what a collapsing NHS looks like. Each metric is worse than the last, every health professional I meet is stuck for words. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen in my career,” says Prof Martin Marshall, head of the Royal College of GPs council. The longtime editor of the Health Service Journal, Alastair McLellan says, “This is the worst – except for next year which will be even worse.”
Never before have 7 million people waited for treatment. Never have so many NHS staff resigned as in recent months, fleeing impossible jobs in understaffed wards, facing a real pay cut. As patient numbers rise, GP numbers fall. Some 3,000 medical school places were cut this year and there have been 8% fewer applicants for nurse training. Dire ambulance response times yield horror stories of heart-attack and stroke victims dying needlessly, as ambulances queue to hand over patients to A&E, because 13,000 beds are blocked with people needing social care.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
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