London, Oct 25 (FN Bureau) The United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS) will receive six billion pounds ($8.2 billion) in cash to tackle the post-pandemic effects, media reported, citing an upcoming announcement of Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the budget 2021. Sunak is expected to unveil the details of the budget on Wednesday. According to The Times newspaper, 2.3 billion pounds from the NHS package will be spent on the construction of over 100 community diagnostic facilities set to provide various types of health tests. Another 1.5 billion pounds will go to establishing surgical hubs in medical facilities to reduce the waiting time of elective operations. In addition, 2.1 billion pounds will be used to boost IT infrastructure and digitizing of patient records, the outlet said. Separately from the healthcare package, 1 billion pounds will be allocated to accelerate court hearings for cases that have been halted due to the pandemic.
The healthcare funding allocation follows the release of government records about the number of non-emergency patients in England awaiting hospital treatment, which reached a record of 5.7 million people, spurred by a pandemic-caused backlog. The waiting list is being updated by an overage of 100,000 people monthly, while the number of patients waiting for their turn for over two years has nearly reached 10,000. Other expectations for the upcoming budget include money for the Crown Prosecution Service, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, transportation system outside London, among others. However, Sunak, speaking on a BBC program, pledged no tax cuts, noting that the budget will be spent carefully to prevent a sharp rise in inflation and growing interest rates.