State of NHS should be declared national emergency, experts say

Warning of existential threat amid deepening crisis in cancer care

The NHS is in such a dire state that the next government should declare it a national emergency, experts have said, as it emerged that record numbers of patients are being denied timely cancer treatment. The health service is facing an “existential threat” because of years of underinvestment, serious staff shortages and the demands of the ageing population, according to the group of senior doctors and NHS leaders.

Whoever wins power after the general election will have to “relaunch” the health service and ask the public to help save it and preserve its founding principles, they said.

The call, by a commission of experts assembled by the BMJ medical journal, comes as fi gures show that since 2020 more than 200,000 people in England have not received potentially life-saving surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy within the NHS’s 62 -day target.

Prof Pat Price , a leading NHS oncologist who helped analyse NHS cancer care data, said that the UK was facing “the deepest cancer crisis” of her 30-year career .

The NHS target is that 85% of cancer patients should receive their fi rst treatment within 62 days of being urgently referred by a GP. International research shows that every four weeks of delay in receiving treatment can lead to a 10% increased risk of dying from the disease.