Welfare Reform on the Web (November 2009): Services for the disabled - UK

Access to specialist neuromuscular care: the Walton Report

All Party Parliamentary Group for Muscular Dystrophy

2009

This report condemns the state of the medical and social services charged with helping people with muscular dystrophy. Services are so patchy that life expectancy rates vary from 30 years in the North East to 18 in the South West. The report complains of a lack of funding, an absence of any national guidelines and insufficient service co-ordination. There are just 13 named co-ordinators overseeing muscular dystrophy services throughout the country; to have enough there should be 60.

(See also Community Care, Sept. 24th 2009, p. 26-27)