Broken Healthcare: A Key Issue For UK Voters Ahead Of Elections

Fatme Ibryanova, 36, will travel from Britain UK to Turkey next month, not to holiday but for a medical appointment about surgery she is struggling to get on the UK’s “broken” state-run health service. The NHS, created after World War II to provide free healthcare to all, is a shadow of its former self, weakened by years of underfunding and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Getting an appointment with a doctor or a dentist is often an ordeal. Emergency rooms are usually overwhelm, and waiting times for hospital treatment regularly hit new highs. But the institution remains beloved by Britons, and the malaise afflicting it is one of their primary concerns going into the country’s general election on July 4.

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London Olympic Games celebrated the health service as the “pride” of the UK

Ibryanova has just seen her local doctor in Chelmsford, a London commuter town in Essex, southeast England, for an ear infection that has been causing her severe pain for months.

It has stopped her working and she needs an operation, quickly. “I’m on a waiting list. I have to wait three or four months. That’s long,” she told AFP. So she decided to go to Turkey, her home country, where she can receive treatment sooner. “If you need operation, they are doing it like this,” she said, snapping her fingers. The opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games celebrated the health service as the “pride” of the UK, she pointed out. But today, she said, it’s “broken”.

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Ibryanova is not alone. More than 7.5 million people in England were waiting for treatment in April, a new peak despite recent investment by the Conservative government. A recent survey suggested that less than a quarter of Britons were satisfied with the NHS, an unprecedented level.

“We have to wait three weeks for a blood test. We often have to queue to buy medications when you can buy them,” lamented 71-year-old retiree Christine Knight. The crisis is particularly acute in south Essex, with one doctor for more than 2,300 patients at the end of last year, much worse than the national average, according to the Nuffield Trust health think-tank.

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