Top health concerns of the nation revealed

Millions of people turn to the NHS website every year to get medical advice from conditions ranging from high blood pressure to tonsillitis.

A large proportion of the top medical advice pages visited involved conditions which largely affect children including chicken pox, tonsillitis, scarlet fever, fever in children and rashes in babies and children.

Visits to the chickenpox page more than doubled in 2022 with 3.7 million views compared with 1.7 million in 2021, NHS Digital said.

NHS Digital said there were three million visits to its scarlet fever information in 2022 – seven times the amount of clicks in 2021, when there were 414,000.

It said that visits to the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) page “remained high”, increasing from 3.1 million in 2021 to 3.5 million in 2022.

The NHS website, which is managed by NHS Digital, had an estimated 2.6 million visits a day in 2022.

Covid-19 was the top reason people visited the NHS website for medical advice in 2022, with the page viewed 16.3 million times, according to the figures.

The second most searched for condition was long Covid.

Meanwhile, a section of the website advising on high blood pressure had 3.8 million views in 2022.

The 10 most viewed pages about medical conditions in 2022 were:

1. Coronavirus (16.3 million views)
2. Long Covid (4.3 million views)
3. High blood pressure (3.8 million views)
4. Chickenpox (3.7 million views)
5. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (3.5 million views)
6. Fever in children (3.4 million views)
7. Scarlet fever (3 million views)
8. Diarrhoea and vomiting (2.9 million views)
9. Tonsillitis (2.8 million views)
10. Rashes in babies and children (2.7 million views)

The most popular section of the website was the Covid-19 booking page which had 60 million visits.

Other popular health services available on the website include an application form for a Global Health Insurance Card (GHIC) for healthcare cover abroad, finding a GP, and a BMI healthy weight calculator.

Joe Risk, NHS Digital’s head of delivery for the NHS website, said: “Millions of people used the NHS website in 2022 for the latest Covid information or to book a vaccination, as well as for advice on topics ranging from high blood pressure to diarrhoea and vomiting.

“Providing access to the latest medical advice and making it as easy as possible for people to access is our top priority, to ensure we continue to support and improve health across the country.”