More than 1,900 children in London have been waiting over a year for NHS treatment, figures revealed on Friday, as a senior health leader warned that the paediatric backlog was growing at an “unprecedented rate”.
A total of 1,907 children in the capital had been waiting for treatment for longer than 52 weeks at the end of May - a rise of 13.8 per cent on the figure reported six months ago.
The overall number of London children on a waiting list has increased by 6.7 per cent in six months and 24 per cent in two years.
Dr Camilla Kingdon, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH), said the figures were “eye-wateringly high” and that long waits were having a "damaging impact" on children.
It comes despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's key pledge to cut NHS waiting times by next year. Ongoing strike action by junior doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) has already resulted in hundreds of thousands of cancelled operations and appointments. A two-day strike planned by hospital consultants next week is expected to bring further disruption.
The BMA are currently reballoting junior doctors for a further six months of industrial action after rejecting the Government's offer of a 6 per cent pay rise, raising the prospect of strikes in the NHS lasting until Christmas. Mr Sunak has said the offer is “final” and pay negotiations will not be reopened.
Senior NHS managers have warned ministers that the pledge to reduce the backlog will be impossible to meet if strike action continues into next year.
To reduce the waiting list, hospitals were due to carry out 107 per cent of the number of planned procedures, such as hip and knee replacements, that they carried out in 2019/20. But the NHS has lowered this figure to 105 per cent due to strike action, according to the Health Service Journal.
Dr Kingdon said prolonged waits for treatment would “not only impair children's mental and physical development but also have a detrimental impact on their education and overall wellbeing”.
“Each month we seeing steady progress being made in shrinking the adult backlog which we commend, but the children’s list continues to rise at an unprecedented rate. These figures, already eye wateringly high, only paint a part of the wider picture as they do not include community paediatrics."
She said that the figures “only paint a part of the wider picture” as they do not include the estimated 220,000 children waiting for community paediatric services, such as mental health, speech and language assessments.
“The data merely confirms what we already know - that there is a fundamental lack of understanding nationally that investment in children has to be a priority.”
