However, it is essential that funding is made available to implement it quickly. Osteoporosis already affects 1 in 3 women and 1 in 12 men over the age of 50, making their bones so porous, they break easily. Someone in the UK breaks a bone every three minutes. Osteoporotic fractures cause disability, chronic pain, loss of height and can severely limit a person's life. Up to 14,000 people a year die in the UK as a result of an osteoporotic hip fracture.
Osteoporosis is largely preventable and treatable.
We warmly welcome this government action on osteoporosis. Implementing the framework across primary care groups throughout England would cost only a fraction of what it currently costs to treat fractures. The National Osteoporosis Society is poised to make it easy for health services to respond to the framework, using their own evidence-based strategy for osteoporosis. A new edition to reflect the NSF is about to be published. GPs should use our ready-made strategy to make it easy for them to adhere to the new standards.