Last month, Britain’s first female chancellor gave the NHS the biggest financial boost in its recent history.
The £22.6bn injection into the Health Service announced in the autumn budget is welcome. Record numbers of people are waiting for crucial procedures and many of our hospitals are in desperate need of renovations and new equipment.
I’m sure much of the money will be put to good use. However, I was saddened to see that Rachel Reeves had failed to find funding for a crucial women’s health issue.
Osteoporosis, a bone-thinning disease, affects more than 3.5 million people in the UK, although it is much more common in women.
It makes bones so weak that even coughing, sneezing, or hugging a grandchild can break them.
Often known as the “silent disease,” patients may not realize their bones are fragile until they suffer a life-changing fracture. These fractures are the fourth leading cause of disability and premature death in the UK.
However, for many years, osteoporosis has been overlooked by the NHS. Patients at risk (for example, older women who have suffered a recent bone fracture) should be screened for the disease using a bone density scan known as a DEXA scan.
Detected early, there are medications patients can take to keep their bones strong, reducing the risk of painful, sometimes life-threatening fractures.
Dr Sarah Jarvis was diagnosed with the bone-thinning disease 18 months ago, after a friend’s diagnosis prompted her to have a scan.
However, only half of UK hospitals have specialist clinics (known as Fracture Liaison Services) to carry out this screening programme.
This means that thousands of patients, mainly women, are not diagnosed or treated. This puts their lives in danger.
As a GP and regular BBC presenter, I have heard many heartbreaking stories about how osteoporosis can ruin lives.
But recently I also faced my own personal battle with this condition.
In my youth, I was an obsessive athlete, and the stress it placed on my body caused my estrogen levels to plummet to the point where I no longer had periods.
Research shows that when the amount of sex hormone decreases, the risk of osteoporosis increases. This is why postmenopausal women, who have very low estrogen levels, are much more at risk for this condition.
I was also extremely deficient in vitamin D, a problem many of us in the UK face due to the lack of sunlight for much of the year. This also increases the chances of suffering from osteoporosis, because vitamin D helps strengthen bones.
But it was only after a friend of mine broke her hip and wrist playing tennis, about 18 months later, that I had a wake-up call about the danger I was in.
Dr Sarah Jarvis is a resident GP on BBC’s The One Show’s and also appears regularly on This Morning and ITV’s Lorraine.
She was about 60 years old, so she was a little older than me (I’m 61).
Shortly after this, I asked my GP to do a DEXA scan and the results were shocking. My bone density was about the same as what you’d expect to see in a 90-year-old. He clearly had osteoporosis.
Fortunately, I am now undergoing treatment, which includes daily injections that improve the strength of my bones. I’ve never had a fracture, although falls still make me nervous.
But I’m well aware that the only reason I got osteoporosis was because, as a doctor, I knew the warning signs. I also knew I needed a DEXA scan, something many patients may have never heard of before.
Without my prior knowledge, I likely would have suffered multiple fractures in the years that followed. And that is why I strongly believe that the government must do more to detect this condition early.
I was very pleased to read earlier this year that the now Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, had promised to make one of his first acts in Government by tasking England’s National Health Service with establishing an “implementation plan” for the Fracture Liaison Services in all hospitals in the country.
It seemed like a big step in the right direction after so many years of dithering on the issue.
So to hear that there are no immediate plans for more such screening clinics in the budget after all was disheartening.
The Mail on Sunday’s campaign for a national osteoporosis screening program has caught the attention of The Queen, who praised MailOnline’s sister publication for putting the condition “on the map”.
Once again, it seems that osteoporosis has been relegated to the back of the queue and treated as a minor health problem.
This is a big mistake because osteoporosis will only become a bigger problem in the coming years.
Over the next twenty years, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) predicts that almost a quarter of the UK population will be over 65 years old. Currently that number is only one in five.
Since the risk of osteoporosis increases with age, this means that millions more people will be at risk of suffering from these terrible fractures. This will put enormous pressure on the NHS and social care system but, more importantly, it will ruin the lives of many Britons.
In the future, I would also like to see a national screening program for all women over 65 and men over 75, regardless of whether they have suffered a fracture before.
Many other European countries offer this measure and it seems crazy to me that we often wait until people have a life-changing fracture to intervene and look for signs of the disease.
But for now, I think the best hope of fixing our current broken osteoporosis screening system lies with Parliament. All three major parties went into the election promising to provide fracture liaison services over the next four years.
In total, 244 deputies have spoken in their favor.
The time for Labor to act is now, while support is so strong.
On behalf of doctors and patients, I plead with Wes Streeting and Rachel Reeves: find funding for fracture liaison services and end this growing health crisis.