ANDY BURNHAM: 'We want the NHS to be a neighbourhood health service - with pharmacies as the front door'

If you feel under the weather this winter, help is closer than you might think. Pharmacies are a one stop shop for healthcare at the heart of almost every high street. They don’t just dispense medicines. They’re an indispensable part of our NHS. Looking for advice to treat a minor illness? Your pharmacist can help with that. Need help for a sore throat or ear ache? You can find the support you need right on your doorstep – four in five people live within 20 minutes of a pharmacy. So you don’t have to go to hospital, and you don’t need to book a GP appointment. Just walk into your local pharmacy and get the treatment you need right there, right then. The Mirror knows the difference these services can make, especially for older people and those who are vulnerable. That’s why they’ve backed community pharmacies to the hilt. And that’s why this government will make pharmacies the front door of the NHS. Earlier this year, we invested a further £340 million in community pharmacies, including to deliver Pharmacy First. The idea is simple. Qualified pharmacists can assess patients, dispense and now prescribe medicine for certain common conditions. Six million consultations have been delivered since the launch of the scheme. GPs and NHS111 have referred three million people to their local pharmacy. And pharmacists have provided more than three million urgent medicine supplies. We’re building on that success in bringing healthcare to your high street. We’re making it possible for qualified prescribing pharmacists to treat five more common health conditions this autumn, like migraines and more ear infections, so access to treatment is easier than ever. We want the NHS to be a neighbourhood health service. I know how hard our NHS works, how much pressure staff are under and how tough it can be for people to access the care they need from my time as Health Secretary. And I know things have only got tougher in the last 15 years. My answer is clear. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, I saw first hand how important it is to put more firepower in the frontlines and give people more control over their own lives. Every place and every person matters. So we’ll make sure people can get the care they need, where they need it. That’s what this is all about. Faster treatment. More services. Better care for patients. And less pressure on hospitals and GPs. One less headache for people to worry about.