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A surge in childhood diseases, resulting in premature death? Shocked? Not particularly. Some (wholly-unqualified) observations:

First: it’s difficult to get a GP appointment these days. Often, adult patients will first be offered a telephone consultation, some days away. If your symptoms are deemed worrying, you may then be invited to an in-person consultation. Timely access to medical care is vital.

Second: many GP practices have outsourced their telephone triage systems to a single nationwide service provider. This may have resulted in some kind of cost-saving, presumably cutting receptionist salaries on site. However, last week, that service was unavailable nationally due to a server fault, leaving patients unable to contact their local surgery.

Third: the established electronic patient record used by the NHS 111 service has been unavailable since August, after the platform provider was hit by a cyber attack. Contingencies have had to be put in place instead, some more effective than others. If call responders and on-call clinicians cannot easily access medical records, it is a problem for patient care.

Forth: though you wouldn’t know this listening to the government and media’s obsession with the so-called migrant crisis (the increase in numbers very obviously having more to do with refugee crises in Ukraine and Afghanistan, than channel crossings), the health service is in crisis. Many NHS trusts are facing acute staffing shortages. This impacts patient care.

Fifth: lockdowns during the pandemic may have impacted the development of children’s natural immunity, in as much as they were exposed to fewer bugs over a period of two years. But I suspect the jury is out on this one.