Health: Osteoporosis and Fractures

Lord Shinkwin Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Shinkwin (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood on securing this debate on an issue very close to my heart, as someone who lives with the bone condition osteogenesis imperfecta, to give brittle bones its medical term, which forced me to spend much of my childhood in a hospital bed. The cost-effective proposal that my noble friend highlighted constitutes a win-win for people faced with my condition, OI, and osteoporosis.

Sticking with my condition for a moment, I understand from bone expert Professor Kassim Javaid, that there were 16,245 hospital admissions for OI patients between 2014 and 2018, with a total cost to the NHS of £24,052,451. Yet, incredibly, OI is not listed as a condition on the NHS website. You can be in hospital and get a diagnosis, go home and look at the NHS list of conditions and see that the condition you have just been diagnosed with supposedly does not exist. How unhelpful for patients and their families looking to manage the condition and reduce fracture risk. I would be really grateful if my noble friend could have that simple but cost-effective anomaly corrected.

I turn specifically to osteoporosis, which people with my condition often go on to develop. I am not going to rehearse the arguments that have been so excellently and eloquently made by my noble friend and others. The key point for me, as for my noble friend, is value for money, so I ask the Minister to give one example of bigger bangs for bucks than investing £27 million in the urgent rollout of fracture liaison services, when the ROI is £3.26 in savings made for every £1 spent. To its credit, Mid and South Essex Integrated Care System has shown what can be done at the working level; now we need it in Government. As the Royal Osteoporosis Society has made clear in its excellent campaign with the Sunday Express, 41—that is, all other—health authorities have yet to act, so we urgently need that top-down mandate.

I finish with this question to the Minister: it may not be a medical term, but does he agree with me and my noble friend Lady Chisholm that this is a classic case of a no-brainer?