Ara Darzi
Credit - Mark Harrison—Camera Press/Redux
Honorary consultant surgeon at Imperial College Hospital NHS Trust, Ara Darzi, was commissioned by the British government to review the state of the National Health Service. What he found was damning: crumbling facilities, equipment shortages, chronically long waits for treatment and outdated technology.
His final report, released in September 2024, exposed one of the country's most respected institutions as a failing system stretched beyond its limits by a huge surge in demand from Britain's aging population. The capacity of the health service was 'degraded by disastrous management reforms,' Darzi wrote, while the trust and good will of many frontline staff has been lost.
The report sparked a public outcry and a renewed commitment by the government to modernize and improve the vital health service. Darzi's review pointed to a number of factors to explain the decline in the health service: too much austerity in the 2010s, weak capital investment, and mismanagement. His insights are now being used to push for reform, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer promising a 10 year plan to reimagine the NHS, focusing on digitizing the organization and committing more investment to preventative care and community health services. Darzi has also called for setting government health targets, like increasing healthy life expectancy by 10 years by 2055, incentivizing businesses to prioritize healthier products, and greater investments in children's health. 'There is no path to either wellbeing or growth without prioritising health,' he says. 'That is a powerful platform for sustained, ambitious action by the new government.'
Contact us at letters@time.com.
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