The government should declare a national emergency in the NHS

One of the many galling statistics about the NHS crisis is that the number of people who die because of delays in ambulance and emergency care – between 300 and 500 a week – is around the same as current deaths from Covid-19 or cerebrovascular disease (stroke), and 10 times the number who perish in road traffic accidents. If it weren’t for the danger of hyperbole, it would be right to call the current crisis an epidemic.

Behind the statistics lie heart-rending stories of extremely ill, vulnerable people, often elderly, dying at home or in the back of an ambulance for lack of resolve to deal with the crisis. Although now widespread and taken for granted, this is not normal, even though it is becoming normalised.

A pensioner expiring before their time on a trolley in a corridor is no longer news in a way it would have been a few years ago. It is accepted as inevitable, almost natural. It is nothing of the sort. Nor is the scramble to get a call in to the GP first thing in the morning, and nor is waiting almost two years for treatment.