People are getting sicker owing to decades of spending cuts, "decimated" public services and the current cost-of-living crisis, doctors have warned. A new report from the British Medical Association (BMA) said medics are struggling to cope with demand from patients whose health conditions are being made worse by poverty, poor housing, lack of heating and skipping meals.
Around half of GP appointments are taken up with often preventable, long-term conditions, while medics spend around 20% of their time dealing with issues that are "non-medical but related to social or economic pressures". The report warned that the UK is "facing multiple threats to its health and the Government is failing to respond".
In the study, the BMA argued that the nation’s health was already deteriorating before Covid hit, including through a decade of austerity, widening inequalities and cuts to public services and public health. The amount of time people spend in poor health has increased, while the gap in healthy life expectancy between the most and least deprived areas is now almost 20 years, it said.
