Healthcare

I recently visited the new Community Diagnostic Centre in Beeston. It offers a range of tests – blood tests, spirometry (I learned that’s to do with lungs and breathing) and heart monitoring – and the great thing is that people don’t have to go to the LGI or Jimmy’s to get those tests done; they can now do them locally. I was really impressed, and it set me thinking about the way in which we provide healthcare.

Quite a few years ago, I went to visit what’s called the Diabetic Limb Salvage Service at Jimmy’s. It does what it says on the sign. It tries to save people’s toes and feet. The Service describes its work as follows:

“Diabetes is a lifelong condition which can cause foot problems. Some of these problems happen because the nerves and blood vessels in your feet are damaged. This can cause numbness in your feet (neuropathy) and less blood flow (ischaemia). These changes can be very gradual and you might not notice them. If you have a diabetic foot ulcer, this means that the area of skin has broken down and the tissue underneath it is now exposed. About one in ten people develop a foot ulcer at some stage. In some people with diabetes the skin does not heal very well, even after only a minor injury. A foot ulcer can become infected, and that infection may be severe.“

The incidence of diabetes is increasing and Amanda Pritchard, the Chief Executive of the NHS, has talked about why the NHS is taking radical action to stem the tide of rising levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Drugs and treatment can of course help, but so too can lifestyle changes.

A few years ago, when I found myself in A&E at the LGI with several broken ribs, one of the doctors told me that quite a few cancers are first spotted when people come into A&E for something else and a scan or an X-ray shows that they’ve also got another problem like cancer. More scanning will find more cancers, and hopefully find them early, but the UK has the lowest number of MRI, CT and PET scanners per million population compared with 10 other similar countries.

It was very welcome, therefore, when Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary, talked in July about the Government’s plans to double the number of CT and MRI scanners; and not just more scanners, but AI-enabled scanners.

Health screening is really important, including tests that can help spot disease early like mammograms for breast cancer or bowel cancer screening for those of us of a certain age. These have been a great step forward because a simple test can help spot the early signs of bowel cancer. The surprising thing though is how many people don’t return their kits. In 2021/22, in Yorkshire and the North-East, about 29% of people did not respond, and the figures show that people who live in the most deprived areas are less likely to participate in screening than those who live in the least deprived areas – a trend that can be seen across all NHS regions.

My final thought on all this is that there are some exciting developments around, including new drugs. For example, it was recently reported that the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is currently taking part in a trial that could see bowel cancer patients in Leeds being invited to take part in a new type of treatment using personalised vaccines in a bid to help stop their disease from returning.

Vaccines are normally used to try and prevent disease, but these trial cancer vaccines are being designed to treat someone once they’ve been diagnosed. They are based on a molecule called mRNA which is the same technology that was used for the COVID-19 vaccine. They are developed by looking at the patient’s cancer to identify specific mutations of the disease, and drawing on this, doctors will try to create an individualised cancer vaccine that can stimulate the immune system to find and destroy any remaining cancer cells.

The other exciting development is the use of artificial intelligence (AI) which is already helping in scanning. As the Prime Minister put it recently “this is where AI is going to be really important for us, because already, if you have a radiologist working with AI doing the scanning, the chances of getting cancer [diagnoses] more accurately, getting it much more early, will go up dramatically. So this allows us to get in earlier with cancer.”

I suspect that in 50 years’ time some of the ways in which healthcare is provided will look rather different, with more scanning and diagnostic centres – like the one in Beeston – and new treatments. But two things won’t change. The first, is the expertise, diligence, care, compassion and commitment of our wonderful NHS staff. And the second is the very founding principle of the NHS – created by the post-war Prime Minister Clem Attlee and Health Minister Nye Bevan – namely that it is free at the point of use.

It was a radical idea then, and despite the challenges the NHS faces, it remains just as radical – and popular – today.

First published in the November 2024 edition of South Leeds Life, available online here https://southleedslife.com/mps-notebook-healthcare/