Almost 80 years on, we are all immensely proud of the National Health Service. We trust the care it provides and the tens of thousands of staff who work so hard to support us at some of the most difficult times in our lives.
We are committed to improving access to NHS services by delivering more care in local communities, closer to home and by cutting long waiting times for planned treatment in hospital. This means investing in new services like 111 press 2 for urgent mental health problems, expanding the common ailments scheme in community pharmacies and training more primary healthcare professionals to prescribe. It also means investing £120m this year to cut long waiting times and the waiting list by providing more tests, more appointments, and more operations.
As we mark, the 10th anniversary of the change in the organ donation consent system, it’s a reminder that Wales has always pioneered changes to healthcare in the UK in the 26 years since devolution – from free prescriptions for everyone to being the first country in Europe to legislate for safe nurse staffing levels.
And we’re going even further by changing the law to embed our health-in-all policies approach to tackle long-term, stubborn and pernicious health inequalities, which blight so many communities and rob too many people of healthy years of life.
Your Welsh Labour Government will always support the NHS in Wales.
It’s our service.
Thank you,
Jeremy Miles MS Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care
