Charities urge Wes Streeting to accelerate fracture screening rollout to prevent deaths

Charities and medical organisations have written to Health Secretary Wes Streeting urging immediate action to speed up the rollout of fracture liaison services (FLS), warning that delays to the programme could lead to thousands of avoidable deaths and fractures.

In a letter seen by The Mail on Sunday, eight organisations said parts of Britain remain without access to FLS — clinics that screen for and help manage osteoporosis after a first fracture — and that a slow implementation risks costing lives. "We are concerned that signs of delay have begun to emerge," the letter says.

The charities and specialist groups stressed that osteoporosis is a widespread condition in the UK, affecting about 3.5 million people, and that one in two women over 50 will suffer a broken bone due to the disease. Fracture liaison services are intended to identify patients after an initial fracture, arrange diagnostic testing and treatment, and reduce the risk of subsequent fractures.

The Mail on Sunday launched a campaign in 2023 to expand FLS to every part of England, a drive supported by the Royal Osteoporosis Society. The UK Government has previously committed to a full national rollout of FLS by 2030, but the letter’s signatories, which include the Royal Osteoporosis Society and the British Menopause Society, said the pace of implementation appears to be lagging.

The organisations warned that if implementation does not begin until 2027, 2028 or 2029, "around 2,500 each year will die needlessly in the meantime, most of them women, and thousands more will suffer fractures and disability." They urged the health secretary to ensure that roll-out plans are accelerated and that access becomes uniform across regions.

Fracture liaison services are widely endorsed by clinicians and patient groups as a key element of secondary prevention for osteoporosis: they aim to capture people who have already had a fragility fracture and to prevent subsequent, potentially more serious breaks. Campaigners say gaps in provision leave many patients without prompt assessment or treatment that could lower their risk of further harm.

Charities have framed the issue as both a public-health priority and a matter of health equity, noting that the burden of osteoporotic fracture is concentrated among older women and can lead to long-term disability and increased mortality. The letter to the health secretary calls for concrete milestones and resources to ensure the national target is met sooner rather than later.

The appeal from the eight organisations follows growing public and professional attention to post-fracture care, with advocates pointing to established FLS models that have reduced re-fracture rates where fully implemented. The organisations did not set out a detailed timetable in the letter but called for an urgent start to local implementation to avert the harms they outlined.

Campaigners said the accelerated introduction of FLS would require coordinated funding, workforce planning and local service redesign. They also urged transparent national monitoring so progress can be tracked and gaps addressed promptly.

The charities’ letter places pressure on ministers to move from the 2030 national aim to earlier, staged implementation so that areas currently without FLS receive services sooner. The groups said their action is driven by concerns about preventable deaths and disability and by the uneven availability of services across England.

The letter and campaign are the latest interventions in a multi-year effort to make secondary prevention of osteoporotic fractures a routine component of care across the NHS. The organisations concluded by asking the health secretary to set out immediate steps to accelerate rollout and to provide assurances that there will be no further delay in widening access to fracture liaison services.