Madeleine Bunting's piece (Faith healing, July 24) is the most sensible commentary on the NHS I have read. We await, with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, the details of the National Plan, but is all the effort really necessary or largely a distraction? We are promised the most radical shakeup since 1948. But haven't we already got the answer to most of these problems in the belated recognition that for decades the service has been struggling with grossly inadequate staffing levels and funding that was slipping further and further behind other comparable countries?
Having guaranteed the funds, government should now stand back and let us get on and use them effectively for the benefit of patients. It has already put new monitoring systems in place to ensure that we do. Any more could be counter-productive.
Peter Fisher
President,
NHS Consultants' Association
nhsca@pop3.poptel.org.uk
• The new NHS plan may see patients as consumers, but we are all people first; we do not necessarily want to be patients at all. Promoting the health of the public requires action to improve employment, education and environment, and to redistribute wealth and income.
Prevention and cure, health and health services, all should be seen as public concerns, not private consumption.
John Nicholson
Chief executive,
UK Public Health Association
john@ukpha.org.uk
