9 January 2025, 17:49 | Updated: 9 January 2025, 17:50

By Sarah Holmes

Wes Streeting is right. No one should die in hospital when they don’t want or need to be there. The state of end of life care needs to change.

In an interview on LBC Radio this week, The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Wes Streeting said he was ‘ashamed’ of the experiences of some patients in the NHS.

He described ‘heart-breaking’ conditions in A&E, including people being driven in ambulances to emergency departments to die because the right end of life care isn’t available to them.

He’s right, it is shameful.

No one should be dying in hospital under these circumstances.

As a palliative care consultant and Chief Medical Officer for Marie Curie, the UK’s leading end of life charity, I know it doesn’t have to be this way.

Across the UK, initiatives set up by Marie Curie are working to stop this happening.

In Bradford, responding to data suggesting there are around 1,000 people with palliative care needs not accessing services, the Responsive Emergency Assessment and Community Team (REACT) has been set up to support patients in the last year of their life, particularly........

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