The NHS ‘Reaches Out’

Following swiftly on from Rishy Sunak (temporary PM in name only now) “reaching out” for ideas with his dodgy questionnaire, I’ve today been touched (and not in a good way) to be the recipient of a letter from the hallowed NHS also “reaching out”.

Clearly the joint sender’s of this appeal for my help, Raghib Ali OBE MD FRCP (UK) & Professor Sir John Bell GBE, FRS, haven’t clocked that I purposefully didn’t bang any pots or indeed use any NHS “services” for at least the last five years having been told (eventually after months of waiting) that I had to go private to have an epidermal cyst removed as the NHS had no funds for such a cosmetic, and by implication, vanity procedure. I suspect it may be easier to request gender reassignment surgery and ask for the cyst to be excised at the same time.

Now it seems the NHS wants me to volunteer for a research programme called ‘Our Future Health’ which aims to be ‘the UK’s largest ever health research programme’, with a target of recruiting up to five million volunteers. Perhaps the Trade Descriptions Act doesn’t apply in the case of healthcare? I strongly suspect that a few more than five million “volunteers” quite recently took part in another alleged NHS healthcare programme, the results of which the NHS seem remarkably reluctant to investigate or even follow up on.

The laudable aim of ‘OFH’ is the prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases like dementia, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and strokes. To kick off, volunteers will be asked to complete an online questionnaire about themselves (I can well imagine the type of multiple-choice questions that that is likely to contain), provide a blood sample and have blood pressure and cholesterol levels measured at a local clinic – what fun! I wonder if those patients actually urgently needing blood tests will be at the back of the queue?

Next up, in the future (when not specified) volunteers will have the option to receive information on their risk of some diseases – calculated using the volunteers’ own provided information and analysis of DNA in their provided blood sample – nothing suspicious there at all then. I do hope the research Johnnies at Imperial are involved and that there is a super-duper infallible computer model to take the guesswork (or actual proficient experience) out of disease diagnosis by quaint old fashioned face-to-face GP Surgery consultations.

Generously a £10 voucher, or as we used to call it in old money ‘a bribe’, is also offered for participation but public- spirited volunteers can opt to donate the £10 to the ‘OFH’ charity instead. Is it just me, or is the prospect of five million volunteers receiving a grand total of £50 million from the cash strapped, unable to cope, NHS a somewhat misguided use of funds when bona fide British NHS financial contributors can’t even get minor ops these days?

Still on a false positive note, £50 million doesn’t buy many DEI grifters now does it?

Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.

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