Julia is Director of 2020health.org, a web-based, centre-right Think Tank for Health and Social Care and uniquely focuses on bottom-up policy development by front line professionals. She also blogs at CentreRight.com.
‘The promise of happiness has created an epidemic of depression’ says Tobias Jones in the first chapter of his brilliant book ‘Utopian Dreams’. It’s not a book about health but his statement could equally apply to feelings about the NHS today. We have been promised so much, firstly by Frank, then Alan M and John, Patsy and now Alan J. We have spent unparalleled sums. Yet we have an NHS that is falling in productivity. We have a crisis in inner-city nursing that means the most vulnerable newborns are getting no attention. And innovative new drugs that save sight or give a few more years of life to those who already know they won’t reach three score years let alone the extra ten, are denied or delayed leaving anguish and anger instead of hope or healing.
It was to this last betrayal that 2020health turned it’s attention in our latest report, ‘Our health, our money, our say’, available on our website. Now I want to make clear from the outset that I am a realist. No health service in the world can meet the demands of its population; there is an infinite illness burden and finite therapeutic resources. However we believe that Labour’s consultation on ‘top-ups’ is premature as it is partly based on a false premise, which is that there isn’t enough money to pay for new drugs. The consultation doesn’t question the status of non-NHS drugs but asks for opinion on whether to allow them alongside NHS care.
Continue reading "Julia Manning: The NHS has our money. We all deserve better treatment." »
Julia Manning, Director of 2020health.org, says that discrediting new vaccines such as the MMR risks the lives of more than those who don't take them.
Last week, 2020health.org held a seminar on the crucial role that modern vaccines have to play in
the delivery of Public Health in the UK. We heard a story from a
Consultant Paediatrician working in South East London about two
children who had previously received kidney transplants at the age of two. They
had had their first MMR jab but not the booster which is
contra-indicated following organ transplants. The children came into
contact with the measles virus and caught the disease. Both of them
suffered permanent brain damage.
This week, the General Medical
Council hearing begins into serious professional misconduct by Dr
Andrew Wakefield and two other doctors who published their damaging
theory of a link between the MMR vaccination jab and autism in 1998.
One of the accusations is that Dr Wakefield did not declare to his
hospital Ethics Committee that he was getting money from the Legal Aid
Board for advising the parents of autistic children who wanted to
pursue compensation in the courts. Only 3 years before in 1995, the
uptake rate of the vaccine had reached 95%, the target rate to achieve
‘herd immunity’. This is where the immunity of a sufficient number of
individuals in a population is such that infection of one individual
will not result in an epidemic. Every parent who declines the MMR jab
increases the risk not only to their child of serious disease, but also
the risk to many others. It is precisely this herd immunity that is
vital to protect people who are immunocompromised, which includes all
organ transplant recipients.
Continue reading "Julia Manning: Vaccinating for the greater good" »
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