Without swift action, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) could end modern medicine as we know it. This would have a devastating impact on patients and their families and carers, the NHS, the economy and on global health security.
Social glorification of its allegedly liberating consequences has too long stifled debate about its impacts – even as it becomes ever easier to get.
Pay for medical staff is set centrally and restrained whilst boards give administrators generous awards.
The former Health Secretary fails to propose any way in which patients and their families can stop thinking of themselves as supplicants.
The crucial factor is how effective vaccines are against hospitalisations for the Omicron variant.
This ideology celebrates willpower, yet scientific research challenges how much of it we have when making dietary choices.
That Switzerland and New Zealand each have their own arrangements suggests that a bespoke arrangement ought to be possible.
The success in procurement and distribution prompts the question of what else we are outstandingly good at.
Although we all have to be working for the best, we also have to be preparing for the worst.
There has been immense optimism around a vaccine. But without that, societies must consider how to live with this disease.
I immediately volunteered to help out at the hospital, where I already had an honorary contract – as well as at the soon-to-open Nightingales.
The NHS issues studiously calm advice, and we wait to see whether the disease can be contained.
It was Henry Willink, supported by Churchill, who declared the NHS should be “free at the point of delivery, according to need not ability to pay.”
Pharmaceutical interventions have their place, but a balanced and sustainable approach should focus on getting people active.