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Dr Simon Opher MP: NHS used to be the best in the world

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Last week in Parliament I concentrated on health care. The NHS used to be the best in the world. It’s a major priority for this government to rebuild it to what it used to be.

On Monday, I led a debate on the impact of food and diet on obesity and how we can prevent it. We need radical action. I think that this Parliament has the opportunity do to obesity what the Government who were in power between 1997 and 2010 did to smoking: we could drastically reduce it.

On Wednesday I chaired a meeting about Child Health, with Barnados and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. We had some very senior doctors (including GPs and paediatricians), but most importantly we had a lot of young people. It very easy to design healthcare for young people without actually including them, and that’s how we get services that don’t really work. 

The government has an ambition to make this generation of young people the healthiest ever. Firstly, and most importantly, we need to lift young people out of poverty, and we have set up the Child Poverty Taskforce to begin to address this. Secondly, we need to bring back one of the best bits of the Blair government, the Sure Start program. This will help ensure that children and their parents get the best possible start in life. It is shocking that there are children starting school who are still in nappies and can’t hold a spoon. Family centres can transform the life outcomes of children and their families and we have to prioritise them. 

We also need to bring paediatric care back into the community. This means both care of young people with long term conditions, and also deal with children with fevers, acute illness and such in general practice. Mental health is also an absolute priority, and we intend to get mental health workers in every school.

On Thursday I hosted a meeting of GPs and MPs looking at ways of improving general practice. We want to move to a model of neighbourhood health centres (as is being proposed in Cam), with all services on one site, (including dental pharmacy and community staff), helping restore continuity of care.

These are the beginning of rebuilding, and improving on, what we lost under the last government.

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