Few government agencies have had a worse pandemic than Public Health England (PHE) whose mission is ‘to protect and improve the nation’s health and to address inequalities.’ Criticisms levelled at PHE over the past 12 months include failing to expand diagnostic testing and contact tracing, discouraging the use of face masks, failing to share infection data with local authorities and overcounting the number of Covid deaths in England.
It has also been slated for focusing too much on lifestyle choices at the expense of properly preparing for a pandemic. In 2018/19, some £220 million of the public health budget was spent on anti-obesity schemes – more than twice the budget for infectious diseases. No wonder then that Matt Hancock has announced the body is due to be scrapped and replaced in due course.
But was the problem even worse than first feared? Tim Spector of Kings College London is interviewed for this week’s Spectator magazine – where he discusses his own problems with PHE:
At a time when the NHS was only accepting two symptoms — a fever and a cough — data from Spector’s CSS app showed that anosmia (loss of smell) was a significant symptom — not that PHE was listening. Spector told the BMJ: ‘I had dealt with six different government bodies; nobody knew who was in charge… I was sceptical that they [PHE] had public health interests at heart: they didn’t seem to want to engage with the public, speak to doctors.’ As it happens, Duncan Selbie, head of PHE, was even in May telling No. 10 that he was more interested in obesity than the coronavirus, and though there was talk about removing Selbie, the Cabinet Office felt it would be ‘too disruptive’. You’d have thought Covid was pretty ‘disruptive’ too. Never mind.
It’s perhaps not surprising that Selbie, who earns £190,000 a year, has not changed his spots. After all it was his anti-obesity zeal that first led him to hit the headlines in 2017 after urging local councils and shopping centres to ban visits from Coca-Cola’s promotional Christmas trucks.
No matter. Selbie crowned his 2020 by being elected the head of the international body of public health in December despite suffering the abolition of his own agency four months before. The press release reports him saying: ‘Public health experts have never been more important to the health of their people and their local economies’ and claiming ‘We have a huge opportunity and responsibility to share our knowledge and learn from each other, ultimately strengthening global health security.’
Best of luck to the rest of the world.
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