NHS enjoys best-ever year for flu

This winter's flu prevention and treatment have been the best ever and the NHS is well prepared for future epidemics, a new Government health czar will claim today.

Sir George Alberti, who oversees access to emergency services, will praise staff success in giving more flu jabs to the elderly and providing extra beds during peak demand.

He is expected to find that nine out of 10 accident and emergency patients - more than 1.5 million people - were seen within the official target time of four hours.

Sir George will welcome "the best performance we have ever had" as being due to "good planning [and] getting new systems in place". He is to promise: "There won't be the panics we have had in the past, with or without epidemics."

Hospital chiefs were helped by the absence of a serious flu epidemic this year - a success which in part may have been due to providing jabs for 70 per cent of over-65s.

John Heyworth, president of the British Association for Accident and Emergency Medicine, welcomed the findings but added a note of caution.

He told the BBC: "There is some genuine room for optimism and encouragement that the general trend is certainly better than it has been, but there is still quite a long way to go. To get more improvement is going to be very difficult."

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Paul Burstow said: "It is a tribute to the hard work of front-line NHS staff that the NHS has had a good record this winter."

He warned ministers against being complacent and claimed a big flu outbreak could have seen the Government "caught out".

Despite the successes, NHS waitinglists lengthened by 14,000 in December. But NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp pointed out that the seasonal rise was smaller than the previous year's.

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