Oldham health campaigner reacts angrily to axing of Public Health England

A leading health campaigner has likened the breaking up of Public Health England (PHE) to the “type of rebranding exercise a dodgy business or polluting nuclear power plant does in an effort to hide the fact their bosses are still here and still clueless.”

Dr Zahid Chauhan OBE also feels that axing the service now is tantamount to blaming PHE staff for the Government’s failings and that the timing, mid-pandemic, could be catastrophic.

“This is the type of administration that looks for someone else to blame when it fails," said Dr Chauhan.

"From locking down far too late to bungling everything from death figures to track and trace, they have made a complete horlicks of handling the pandemic.

"You can bet when we hear about their new endeavour, it will still be their failing government making the decisions plus plenty of jobs for the boys.”

Set up by then Tory Health Minister Jeremy Hunt in 2013, Public Health England was designed to bring disparate health organisations together and ensure that the wellbeing of the nation was improved.

It was badged as an organisation that through research and the swapping of best practice, would ensure better health for all.

“The fact that BAME and disadvantaged communities have been so prone to the pandemic is evidence that health equalities have not been established. In fact, the divide between rich and poor has grown larger,” continued Dr Chauhan.

“However, instead of addressing that by putting more resource into healthcare in poorer communities, the Government decided to make PHE a powerless organisation with too wide a remit and use them as a punch bag when things went wrong.”

It was PHE’s role to ready Britain for a possible pandemic – but again everything from a lack of personal protection equipment for nurses to a lack of ventilators to treat patients has seen blame sent their way.

But Dr Chauhan said: “No country could have fully prepared for the scale of this pandemic.

"That said, PHE were also put in the invidious position of working with a Government who proudly boasts it doesn’t listen to experts and which has decimated the NHS with cuts.

"It didn’t even provide PHE with a decent budget.”

Dr Chauhan believes that while PHE has been hamstrung, its aims are laudable, and he wants to see the creation of a body that battles the huge gulf between health in poorer areas and affluent ones.

He added: “Where I practice medicine in Oldham, the difference between life expectancy in rich and poor is almost a decade.

"We also have a rising homelessness problem with rough sleepers having a life expectancy of just 45 years-of-age.

"This is symptomatic of a divided, unhealthy country.

"The Government needs to create a proper service to ensure health for all.

"What I suspect we will get is another stealthy move towards privatisation of the health service.”

Dr Chauhan is a national campaigner for health equalities plus the founder of the Homeless-Friendly health programme for rough sleepers and those experiencing homelessness.

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