MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th July, 2023) Forty-seven percent of people in the United Kingdom expect the National Health Service (NHS) to get worse in the coming years, an Ipsos poll commissioned by Sky news said on Wednesday.
The overwhelming majority of respondents, 90%, think that the quality of health care will not improve, with 47% saying it will get even worse, the survey showed. Of all countries polled, the level of pessimism is worse only in France and Hungary, where 52% and 48% of respondents, respectively, believe their healthcare systems will deteriorate in the future.
Around 83% of UK citizens also think that the NHS is "overstretched," which is more than in any other country represented in the poll.
Over 75% of people in the UK believe that waiting times in hospitals are "too long" and 52% believe it is not easy to get an appointment, which is the third-highest share of any country polled in both cases.
The survey was conducted among adults under 75 from March 24 to April 7 in 16 countries, including EU countries, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Argentina, South Korea and Japan. The number of respondents per country ranged from 500 to 2,000.
For months, the UK's NHS has suffered from a crisis mainly due to a severe shortage of workers. More and more people have been leaving the profession amid excessive workloads, low pay and a lack of opportunities to upgrade their skills. Thousands of UK ambulance workers staged protests during the winter, demanding higher wages amid the cost of living crisis.
