The NHS is now the No Help Service, says Emily Carver

We are a sick, sick nation. Quite literally.

New figures released about the amount of excess deaths since lockdown, plus the millions of people waiting for medical care are shocking. But what’s more shocking are the devastating stories of the human beings behind the numbers. Grandmothers, Grandfathers, young children, all let down by the NHS.

The NHS has gone from being the National Health Service to the No Help Service.

Take the case of one 87-year-old man with cancer, seven broken ribs and two pelvic fractures. Can you imagine the agony he must have been in? He was forced to cling to life for 15 hours before the ambulance arrived. His family had to build a makeshift shelter to protect him from the elements.

And a 90 year old woman - Daphne Syms - was forced to wait 40 hours for an ambulance after a fall - that’s nearly TWO DAYS!

Then after all that she spent the night in the back of the ambulance because there were no beds available.

South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust has said it is "sorry" for its response time to both incidents and that we are sorry and upset that we were unable to provide Ms Syms with the timely response and care that she needed. Our ambulance clinicians strive every day to give their best to patients.

But sorry isn't enough, is it.

Now you won’t believe what the NHS are about to do next?

It is reportedly about to launch a Covid-style campaign that will urge Brits to avoid A&E and to only dial 999 if absolutely necessary this winter.

What an absolute farce - what will this kind of messaging do?

Will an elderly woman, freezing in her home, think twice about calling an ambulance, for fear of putting too much strain on the health service?

Too concerned by wasting the time of the doctors and nurses? How many times do you hear elderly people say: ‘Oh, I don’t want to be a burden’ when, in reality, they seriously need help?

There are currently 6.7 million people waiting to start treatment. It is predicted that this could reach 14 million people by next autumn - increasing by an estimated 150,000 people every month.

It’s shocking stuff. And let’s get one thing straight - at the time that more people than ever before are waiting for hospital treatment, our NHS is reportedly planning to put out a message to tell people to avoid hospital unless it’s absolutely necessary. Unbelievable.

And let’s not forget it was this kind of messaging that got us into this mess.

The government pumped out the message: “Stay Home, Protect the NHS”. Many people are reluctant to seek medical help at the best of times, for goodness sake, and this put people off, so now they’re more seriously ill, requiring more drastic care, which they can’t get access to unless they spend the kids’ inheritance and go private where, remarkably, their usual NHS doctor will probably be waiting for them with open arms.

Unlike the NHS, I’d like to try to actually diagnose the root cause of this issue - lockdown.

It’s likely that lockdown is one of the reasons for the excess deaths we’re seeing now

Missed and delayed diagnoses early in the pandemic are undoubtedly a cause, if not the primary cause.

Those missing out on diabetes checks, those missing out on cancer checks, delayed treatment for heart disease, the list goes on.

And it’s our nation’s children, too. Our nation’s future!

The Department for Education found that the number of children needing support at school because of emotional or mental health issues has shot up by almost a third since the pandemic began - with more than 128,000 11 to 16-year-olds receiving support for social, emotional or mental health problems.

Then we’ve got the rapid rise in drink and drug addiction.

The British Liver Trust reported a 500% rise in calls to its helpline during the first lockdown. Many of those callers could now be dead, seriously ill, or in an ever-worsening spiral of addiction.

In Scotland, alcohol-related deaths rose by 17% in 2020 - due to increases in both solitary drinking and drinking at home during the lockdowns.

This is precisely the time when we need the National Health Service to be urging people to come forward and seek help, not be actively encouraging people to swerve its services. ‘Help us, Help you’ is reportedly the slogan they’ll recycle to advise people to only come to A&E when absolutely necessary.

This all sticks in the craw somewhat when one thinks about the amount of money they’re spending on new woke initiatives.

All this ‘help us, help you’ nonsense makes the NHS sound like a charity case, in reality, it’s just a basket case.