THE round of party conferences has just concluded. All the political parties realise it is a big vote winner, or loser. Each party claims it will “save the NHS”.

The only solution on offer is to pump more and more money into it. Money we do not have and have to borrow from our children’s futures to spend.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the last ten years, the UK population has increased from 60m to 64m, while NHS spending has gone up from £64bn to £114bn, hospital admissions from 11m to 15m and A&E attendances from 14m to 21m.

GPs offer 330 million appointments per year. We spend 9.5 per cent of our GDP on the NHS, up from six per cent in 1998. The NHS has 1.34m staff, one of the largest employers in the world. The demand for healthcare is rising faster than the population. How can we cope? By spending more and more money on it?

The political debate has become all about money and how to meet demand rather than looking at creative ways to reduce demand by improving health and educating people.

No one has stopped and asked why are we so unhealthy as a population?

Why do we need so much health care?Why have none of the political parties asked if anything can be done to reduce demand by improving the health of the population using incentives, education and penalties?

Probably because they think the truth is unpalatable and will not get them elected in future. Will we as a population accept penalties for continuing to live an unhealthy lifestyle: smoking, drinking too much, being overweight and not doing enough exercise? Or, is it better to offer incentives?

We are certainly not doing enough to educate the population about common problems and how to self manage them, or how to improve their health.

I recently wrote about making health promotion and education part of the BBC charter and have written to the health secretary with this idea – I’ve yet to get a reply.

Ebola update

Four thousand people have now died from Ebola, a virus that causes haemorrhagic fever and kills 70 per cent of the people infected with it and the disease is spreading across the globe. The first death has been recorded in the US, though we have yet to see any in the UK.

The Government has sent some medics from the army to West Africa to try and contain the outbreak. The UN calls it the greatest peacetime challenge it has ever faced. Though most of the patients are in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea it is spreading quickly.

The problem is that it takes three weeks for the symptoms to start after a person has become infected so airport screening programs are unlikely to be helpful. The medical staff treating these patients are the heroes of our time- knowing they risk their own life in looking after their patients. A nurse in Madrid is ill after contracting the disease while treating a patient.

The world is slowly waking up to the potential catastrophe that could follow – but not fast enough.

Manoj Krishna is a spine surgeon. Further details about his work can be found at spinalsurgeon.com