Health: Osteoporosis and Fractures

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood. I thank him for all his work in this important area.

I have been a member of the Royal Osteoporosis Society for about 13 years, not because I had any family association with osteoporosis—at least, that is what I thought until March this year, when a close family member was diagnosed—but because I thought that it was a good organisation, which deserved support.

When I was a non-executive director at King’s College Hospital in the 1990s, I was asked to be the older persons’ champion. I spent considerable time looking at hospital processes and staff awareness to identify the needs of older people. The impact of falls, and the cost not only to the health services but to individual quality of life, was and is immense. That impact has to be multiplied several times if the faller has osteoporosis or is subsequently diagnosed with it.

Too often overlooked is the loss of confidence, an unwillingness to go out and an increase in fearfulness. We cannot assume that sufferers will want treatment or welcome attention, which is why it is so easy to neglect this disease and why two-thirds of people needing medication miss out.

I want to ask some questions about the Government’s women’s health strategy. In a Written Answer to the APPG’s report on the undertreatment of osteoporosis, which was referred to, the Minister Helen Whately indicated:

“The report’s recommendations are predominately being addressed through the women’s health strategy and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidance”.


However, osteoporosis is mentioned only 12 times in the 128-page women’s health strategy report, with no actionable plan for addressing bone health for women throughout their lives. NICE guidance is of course important, but it cannot address the need for leadership that the noble Lord, Lord Black, called for.

On 6 June, Minister Maria Caulfield said:

“NHS England is expanding fracture services for high-risk women with osteoporosis, and it is working to prevent falls”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/6/23; col. 668.]


Can the Minister give any examples of an area where fracture services are being expanded for high-risk women? How many of the new women’s health hubs will have arrangements for density scanning and referral to fracture liaison services?

I conclude by thanking the Sunday Express for its Better Bones campaign and the noble Lord, Lord Black of Brentwood, for initiating this debate.