NHS ‘dangerously over-reliant’ on China with one of SIX medicinal products from Beijing

One report warns that the NHS has become “dangerously too dependent” on China for essential medicines and supplies.

One in six medical products, including needles, bandages and oxygen used in British hospitals, are shipped from Beijing, according to the Civitas think tank.

It found that the NHS’s overall reliance on Chinese supply chains has tripled since 2019, with the UK shipping £6.2bn a year to Beijing for medical equipment.

The report warns that China may “weapon” or “disable” medical supplies in future geopolitical conflicts.

Safety experts are now calling for an “NHS Safety Act” to rid the UK of Chinese medical supplies and start more production domestically.

Europe comes as it tries to reduce its reliance on Russian gas and oil after Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

The Kremlin stopped energy exports to Poland and Bulgaria to provide aid to Ukraine and impose financial sanctions on Russia.

Civitas reviewed 228 medical products on the government’s disaster list, including drugs, tests, medical devices and personal protective equipment (PPE).

The team found that 17% of the pre-pandemic rate of 6% were from China.

They warned they would go “hat in hand” to Beijing for medical supplies during the COIVD crisis, which the UK has been swept away by the pandemic.

The report revealed that one-third of diagnostic tests and equipment and 30% of personal protective equipment used in healthcare now come from China.

Almost all the sheet masks doctors use in hospitals come from China (90%), more than half of the gloves (54%) and almost 80% of the bandages.

42% of emergency vehicles and wheelchairs are made in China.

Robert Clark, head of defense and security at Civitas, said: “Prior to the pandemic, only 6% of vital medical supplies were shipped from China, this figure has now risen to almost one-sixth.

Things like gloves, monitors, wheelchairs and bandages come mostly from China, not England. We are dangerously too dependent on China.

“When the pandemic hit, we were caught taking a nap and had to go to China to keep the NHS afloat, the healthcare equivalent of an IMF loan in the 1970s.

“As a result, we are now sending over £6 billion a year to British taxpayers in cash to import essential medical supplies to the Chinese government.

We are not naive about China. This is an urgent issue for health leaders as future geopolitical strife risks leading the Chinese to withdraw critical medical supplies for the NHS”.

It comes after a separate report found NHS bureaucracy had doubled since hitting Covid, although the front line number remained the same.

Analysis by think tank Policy Exchange found 14,515 staff in NHS England and the Department of Health in February, up from 7,883 in 2020.

These figures do not include government health agencies such as the UK Health Security Agency, which expanded during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, the number of NHS nurses has increased by just 7% over the past two years, despite frontline staff at the center of the NHS Covid recovery plan.

Policy Change described inequality as “staggering” and called for an urgent review.

It will raise concerns that the NHS’s £12bn cash injection will be swallowed up by the health bureaucracy rather than tackle the waiting list crisis.

The extra money will be funded by a 1.25% tax hike that goes into effect in April, breaking the promise of a substantial Tory manifesto in 2019.

A record 6.4 million people in England – one in nine of the population – are on the waiting list for NHS treatment, emergency room waiting times are the worst ever and an ambulance service is in crisis.