I am glad they’re screening for it. I was born to someone who had the virus, but didn’t know I had Hep C myself until I submitted myself to an exceptionally thorough STI testing panel. I say exceptional, because the standard ones I’d done throughout college and early adulthood do not happen to include that particular test. So I feel a bit lucky to have been able to get diagnosed and treated in my mid-20s, before the disease could do much damage.
Hep C screening at least once for adults >= 18 is recommended and considered standard of care in the United States. I checked my medical records and I have a negative Hep C result in an old checkup when I was younger, and another one from a new provider who insisted on a big panel of standard testing for new patients (despite me having no risk factors).
It’s unfortunate that your early providers dropped the ball. I wonder if they assumed you had already been tested for some reason?
I'm not a trump fan, but the antivax train has nothing to do with him. (Evidence: Canada is doing even worse then us when it comes to measles). If we want to fix this problem (we do), the first step is to recognize the actual problem, not to play the blame game on whichever politician you currently don't like!
It has a lot to do with him. He doesn't actually have an opinion on any policy issue. For various political reasons, Trump decided to let RFK dictate public health policy according to his extremely delusional ideas. Yes, there was an antivax movement in this country for many years, just as there has been misogyny, racism, and transphobia. Trump has normalized and supercharged all of these moronic and dangerous ideas.
I have not been following measles in Canada, so I can't address that.
Trump is trying to hang Fauci. That goes in the completely opposite direction of promoting the trust of medical institutions in general society, and it's trust that will get people back to vaccinating themselves and their children.
"The order recommends that all shots be given at separate medical visits, a frequent point Trump has made despite the safety, ease and lower costs of giving vaccines together."
“Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal,” Trump said of the MMR vaccine at the signing of the order on Monday.
Asked if he had evidence that the combined MMR vaccine was “lethal”, Trump said: “No. What I’ve heard is that there are some people who say it is that way.”
Antivax fundamentally has its contemporary roots in Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent anti-MMR campaign.
So directing by executive order and by his own admission without evidence that the MMR vaccine be split up into separate shots is, very clearly, an antivax action. This is the first victory that Wakefield (a man who had a patent on a single measles vaccine!) wanted, and RFK Jr was pursuing.
But this is Trump saying this and signing it. So as of yesterday, it now has everything to do with Trump, sorry. He has handed the anti-MMR movement its ultimate victory and in so doing validated the entire antivax worldview.
>> Canada is doing even worse then us when it comes to measles
Not in Canada but unfortunately US nonsense spreads globally pretty quickly these days. The amount of Trump support in the UK is both bizarre and surprising. When someone with the worlds largest megaphone lies about vaccines, unfortunately people everywhere listen.
>I'm not a trump fan, but the antivax train has nothing to do with him.
Well not nothing. But it predates him and he adopted the movement early in his political career. When I was in high school (2004-8) antivax sentiment was generally associated with liberal Democrats in places like Marin County. This was a favorite retort of conservatives when confronted with their own backwardness on scientific understanding of evolution and climate change. In 2015 Trump began courting the anti-vaccine crowd and the political valence of that flavor of woo-woo nonsense flipped seemingly overnight. It was surreal to see it happen in real time. By 2020 he had lost control of the monster he helped create and the crowd booed him when he said they should get the Covid vaccine.
He was literally spreading FUD about vaccines today. And the measles stuff has got so bad RFK had to mildy backtrack on his previous antivax statements in recent interviews.
From today:
Both Trump and Kennedy made repeated mentions of autism throughout the order signing, emphasizing a scientifically unproven link between vaccines and the condition. Dozens of studies show no link between the two.
“Today we’re proud to officially announce the United States of America’s gold standard childhood vaccination recommendations. That has to do with many subjects including autism in particular,” Trump said at the beginning of the order signing.
“I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination where it looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child’s body and bad things happen in too many cases,” Trump later said on breaking up each shot into an individual medical visit, before adding: “This is an explosion, it’s an epidemic,” in an apparent reference to autism.
Interesting that it's just England (and not Scotland, Wales, or NI). I realize they all have independent NHSs, but still would assume a program like this would rolled out across all the constituent countries.
Each nation has different social and health issues, each nation makes its own plan.
All four nations NHSes work with a single charity, the Hep C Trust.
They're all following the WHO targets for elimination -- you're hearing about this now soon after World Hepatitis Day (July 28th, as conceived of by the WHO).
I wouldn't have assumed this really because really the whole point of devolution is that they get to choose what to prioritise, so perhaps the other nations choose to do something they consider to be more pressing for their populations.
I don't know if borders matter much in this case. It's approximately just as easy to travel to England from many other countries as it is to travel to England from the rest of the UK.
It is a lot harder to travel into England from outside of the United Kingdom than it is to travel from England to Scotland or Wales. For one, I do not need a passport to get on a train to Scotland. Nor do I need a visa.
But you most likely have a passport, and most (western/european) countries have "automatic" visas to the UK, so for the most part, training from London to Edinburgh isn't much easier than Paris to London. Sure there is no passport control, but UK passport control is typically just scan your passport's chip and look at a camera.
I work with people who actively chose to go to conference in Berlin instead of the UK due to visa issues. The passport control is a real issue one cannot just handwave away.
The borders between Scotland, England, and Wales are effectively like state borders in the US. Unless you see a street sign, you wouldn't know you crossed it.
NI is physically on a different island, so requires a boat or plane ride.
And all of the UK (ignoring the territories and ex-colonies) is on islands. And require a valid passport, passing through customs/immigration checks, and either a plane, boat, or train ride.
Given that Great Britain is an island, it is still much easier to drive down the M6/A74(M) or take a hike around the Welsh borders than say, take a flight or swim.
Nah we are good - We have our problems (including our own version of your guy but he hasn't won yet and is currently running against a man with a bin on his head) but on the whole, nah we are good.
Farage isn't quite the same and of course the situation is rather different.
The three jobs are divided up differently, though still between too few people. You have a Figurehead, the Head of State, which here is King Charles and in the US is Donald Trump. That's the part Trump most likes, you get free gold stuff, you're allowed to do whatever you please, everybody is supposed to suck up to you, hooray. Farage would not get that job.
Next you've got Executive leader. Trump doesn't enjoy this as much. People keep trying to blame him for the fact he's bad at it. He appointed people he saw on TV to run things, how is it his fault they're not brilliant? This would be half of Farage's job as Prime Minister and he likes being asked to account for his incompetence even less than Trump.
Finally Head of the Legislature, in the US this isn't Trump's job, Mike Johnson is in the House and John Thune in the Senate. Farage would get this job in full as the Prime Minister. Even before he resigned he was rarely actually in Westminster, it's boring and you need to be good at actual politics, so of course he's not there, he gets paid more to be somewhere else.
I also don't think Nigel can put together the numbers. Trump has Mike and John to try to make the numbers work, and Farage wouldn't have that. "My way or the highway" is what Farage would say, and that doesn't make the numbers work. That's how you lose a Confidence motion and you're back on your arse in six weeks.
[Edited to correct the Senate leader, mistake pointed out by ragnese below]
Good explanation. Just one correction: John Thune is the Senate majority leader (so, the "head" of the Senate). Steve Scalise is in the House and he's the head of the Republican party in the House, whereas Mike Johnson (who is also a Republican) is the House majority leader (so the head of the whole House, not just his party).
So, it's Mike Johnson for the House and John Thune for the Senate.
Well, then, we can offer you measles, instead. How's that? We're also working on bringing back polio and smallpox. Think of it as our contribution to FREEDOM!
> The target of treating 80% of all known cases has already been met, and deaths from the virus have fallen by 36% in the last decade, just short of what is needed by 2030.
What is needed by 2030? There is no mention prior to this statement.
Later:
> NHS England says that since 2015, more than 100,000 people have been diagnosed and treated for hepatitis C, meaning the country is already meeting that target.
Again, what target are we talking about??
Much later:
> Prof Frankie Swords, NHS national medical director, added: "England is now leading the world in the mission to eliminate this disease and on course to beat the WHO's 2030 target, but we are determined to keep up the momentum and finish the job.
I think you are partially correct. They trained AI on their articles to produce the same style articles. I am not a large consumer of BBC articles. This style of snippet after snippet is annoying. Perhaps that is why I am not a large consumer of BBC articles.
> Style Assist helps BBC journalists quickly adapt trusted content into BBC News house style, speeding up the publication of high-quality local stories. It uses a BBC-trained AI model to generate a draft, which is always reviewed and edited by journalists before publication. This helps save time while maintaining accuracy, tone and editorial standards. Find out more in an article from Rhodri Talfan Davies.
Style Assist is mainly for articles written by journalists that are employed by third-party news organisations (who own the UK's local news outlets) but are subsidised by the BBC - these people are "local democracy reporters".
LDRS articles are made free to everyone in the scheme (including the BBC), but because the content is written primarily for their home news org the articles that end up being published by the BBC need to be modified to comply with the BBC's editorial guidelines and for style reasons.
My reading of the article was aggressive response by single payer healthcare (i.e. NHS) is responsible so that would be almost impossible politically in USA as long as senate exists on top of non scientific medical authorities.
That's true, I was recollecting when we had somewhat ordinary politics in USA and Affordable Care Act passed when Democrats had majority in Senate but making it single payer was stopped by purported Democrat Joe Leiberman.
Honestly, Mehmet Oz deserves more of the blame here. He and the other people who are fighting to make healthcare expensive and inaccessible create situations where people aren't being diagnosed and cured of Hep C, which leaves them passing the infection to others through sexual contact, sharing needles, etc.
RFK Jr. is an anti-vax crackpot, but Hep C isn't vaccine-preventable. On the other hand, we can absolutely blame RFK Jr. for our rising Hep A, B, and D rates.
Trump just issued an order reducing childhood vaccines, plus there is a Hep C vaccine which is being ignored by the CDC. Never mind the resurgence of many childhood diseases thanks to RFK jr and Trump.
I do not know why some people think the current US regime will follow England with all evidence pointing to doing the exact opposite.
> "Treatment involves a free course of antiviral tablets lasting 8 to 12 weeks, which cures more than 95% of cases."
must be nice to have a government that actually cares about its citizens health, we're still waiting DECADES for that Republican health care plan (other than "just die quietly")
You take antivirals orally. There is no vaccine that I'm aware of. I got Hep C from a blood transfusion in the 80s and waited decades without symptoms for modern antivirals before finally getting treated.
Literally nothing in the article points to it being eliminated, only reaching a target of diagnosing 90% of the cases, which doesn't do anything to eliminate it when a large number of cases comes from drug users which are unlikely to care very much about it.
> The target of treating 80% of all known cases has already been met, and deaths from the virus have fallen by 36% in the last decade, just short of what is needed by 2030. Taking antiviral tablets for 8 to 12 weeks can cure more than 95% of cases.
So indeed diagnosing the cases is leading directly to deaths prevented.
> So indeed diagnosing the cases is leading directly to deaths prevented.
This is not what the title claims. The title claims that hepatitis C is to be eliminated, aka 0%. This is not possible; anyone with a basic 101 virology knows why. BBC lies here via the title.
Elimination doesn't mean there are no incidences of it, it means no new cases diagnosed in England. This is a result of reducing the cases so much that the chance of catching it drops to virtually zero. Drug users have a range of cleaner alternatives today than 10 years ago so is less of an issue but also if very few people have it, the chance of a drug user sharing a needle with someone who has becomes very small indeed.
What do you mean by this? The article quotes an NHS director backing up the statement in the title.
> England is now leading the world in the mission to eliminate this disease and on course to beat the WHO's 2030 target, but we are determined to keep up the momentum and finish the job.
Just to understand this: When someone says "country England", do they mean "country" like in "nation", considering England a separate nation, or is it a lapse and they mean UK? Is England usually referred to as a country, or just part of a country?
I usually think of a country as equal to a nation, and as far as I know, Wales and Scotland have not split off yet? Is the term "country" not actually that sharply defined?
EDIT: Thanks people, I just asked a question to better understand the terminology, you know ...
In this case it's health related and each of the countries in the UK have their own National Health Services (or Health and Social Care in NI). It's not a lapse here.
I don't understand. It's an article about England. They only have information to hand about England, from the authority tasked with dealing with health in England.
If I read an article from them about crime in London, quoting the Metropolitan Police, I don't immediately think that they don't care about, say, the West Midlands.
The BBC do use a consistent naming scheme, you're just not understanding the scheme. Scotland has their own devolved NHS, and track their own health statistics. Scotland not being mentioned is because the Hepatitis C Trust were talking about England's Hep C numbers, it wasn't an intentional slight on Scotland.
Confusingly the proper term for England, Scotland, Wales, and NI is country individually, the UK is a country of countries. They should probably be called states but they never have been, I'd pretty much always assume when someone says England to become the first country... that they mean England exclusively.
The bit that gets me is that people often refer to the UK but actually mean GB or vice versa.
When I've heard the distinction (often in a historical context), 'nation' is usually meant to mean a set of people in a place with some sense of collective identity or origin, while 'state' is the governing body which has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence within well defined borders. When these overlap the result is a nation-state, but they don't always line up so nearly. Using those definitions England, Wales, and Scotland are nations. Ireland (including northern Ireland) could also be called a nation (though, of course, as should be obvious by the fact that this does not line up with the borders of the state, this is a contentious topic). The United Kingdom is the state (and of course Ireland-minus-northern-ireland is also a state). 'Country' as a term generally doesn't imply either of these (it's just a name for some chunk of land, notionally), though it's often synonymous with the nation-state when the borders all actually line up neatly, as opposed to in the UK.
People in the UK would refer to England as a country and most people would actually be confused if you referred to the UK as a country, even though it technically is. People in England don’t really think of the UK as anything other than “the UK”. People from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have more nuanced takes.
I'm English and I don't think England or Scotland or Wales are countries. People get confused because of football and rugby. They're nations. The country is the United Kingdom.
England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is also a country. You can disagree, but you're disagreeing with the government and the international community.
England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are constituent countries in a larger country called the United Kingdom. When dealing with international affairs, you typically want to be talking about the UK (unless the subject is sport), as that is the sovereign state. But for domestic affairs, it’s often split in ways that are confusing if you don’t understand various bits of history stretching back about a thousand years.
For instance, England and Wales share a legal system, but Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own. There’s bunch of special things about Northern Ireland and its relation to Ireland. And all of the constituent countries have their own parliament / assembly except for England (the parliament in London is for the whole of the UK where MPs for all constituent countries can vote).
In this particular case, the constituent countries have their own health systems, so it’s normally England we would be talking about, not the UK.
Yeah England is a country. Like what else do we have the name “England” for? We talk a lot more about England than some non-country geography like Anatolia (Asian Turkey). For example there was no UK in the World Cup, but England made it quite far.
If that’s a bit eccentric, well this is the same place that refers to Europe as a different place even though France borders the UK by automobile road.
OK, so now we have the following terms: State, nation, country, sovereign country.
For example in Germany one would say there are 16 states, but one wouldn't say that there are 16 countries. Never heard anyone claim that. So state seems to be different from country, at least here. Would people in the UK say that Scotland or Wales are "nations"? Or is at least that term very clearly only for units that could participate under a flag in lets say the olympics? (I assume here, that Scotland and Wales are not separately competing, but are under UK flag.)
"And by 'country' we mean a sovereign state that is a member of the UN in its own right" to quote the famous UK Quiz Show "Pointless".
Team GB enters the Olympics but as you may have noticed it was England who came Third in the World Cup recently, and likewise England play international rugby, including against Wales and Scotland.
The UK, crown dependencies and overseas territories compete as Great Britain in the Olympics rather than the UK. Northern Irish folks can compete for Ireland or GB.
As an English person I would say that Scotland and Wales are nations and countries; constituent countries of the country that is the UK.
- Syphilis
- Hep B
- Hep C
- HIV 1 and 2 and P24
- Chlamydia
- Gonorrhoea
It’s unfortunate that your early providers dropped the ball. I wonder if they assumed you had already been tested for some reason?
https://crukcancerintelligence.shinyapps.io/CancerStatsDataH...
I have not been following measles in Canada, so I can't address that.
"The order recommends that all shots be given at separate medical visits, a frequent point Trump has made despite the safety, ease and lower costs of giving vaccines together."
“Together, there could be a possibility they’re quite lethal,” Trump said of the MMR vaccine at the signing of the order on Monday.
Asked if he had evidence that the combined MMR vaccine was “lethal”, Trump said: “No. What I’ve heard is that there are some people who say it is that way.”
Antivax fundamentally has its contemporary roots in Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent anti-MMR campaign.
So directing by executive order and by his own admission without evidence that the MMR vaccine be split up into separate shots is, very clearly, an antivax action. This is the first victory that Wakefield (a man who had a patent on a single measles vaccine!) wanted, and RFK Jr was pursuing.
But this is Trump saying this and signing it. So as of yesterday, it now has everything to do with Trump, sorry. He has handed the anti-MMR movement its ultimate victory and in so doing validated the entire antivax worldview.
Not in Canada but unfortunately US nonsense spreads globally pretty quickly these days. The amount of Trump support in the UK is both bizarre and surprising. When someone with the worlds largest megaphone lies about vaccines, unfortunately people everywhere listen.
Well not nothing. But it predates him and he adopted the movement early in his political career. When I was in high school (2004-8) antivax sentiment was generally associated with liberal Democrats in places like Marin County. This was a favorite retort of conservatives when confronted with their own backwardness on scientific understanding of evolution and climate change. In 2015 Trump began courting the anti-vaccine crowd and the political valence of that flavor of woo-woo nonsense flipped seemingly overnight. It was surreal to see it happen in real time. By 2020 he had lost control of the monster he helped create and the crowd booed him when he said they should get the Covid vaccine.
From today:
Both Trump and Kennedy made repeated mentions of autism throughout the order signing, emphasizing a scientifically unproven link between vaccines and the condition. Dozens of studies show no link between the two.
“Today we’re proud to officially announce the United States of America’s gold standard childhood vaccination recommendations. That has to do with many subjects including autism in particular,” Trump said at the beginning of the order signing.
“I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination where it looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child’s body and bad things happen in too many cases,” Trump later said on breaking up each shot into an individual medical visit, before adding: “This is an explosion, it’s an epidemic,” in an apparent reference to autism.
All four nations NHSes work with a single charity, the Hep C Trust.
They're all following the WHO targets for elimination -- you're hearing about this now soon after World Hepatitis Day (July 28th, as conceived of by the WHO).
https://www.hepctrust.org.uk/blog/2026/07/four-nations-on-th...
As for progress:
- July 2026: Wales doesn't have percentage-of-population counts but here's its latest report: https://phw.nhs.wales/reports/trends-in-the-prevention-diagn...
- November 2025: Scotland believes it has identified and is treating 85% of chronic sufferers: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/surveillance-...
- January 2021: Northern Ireland doesn't publish stats, but has a 2021-2025 plan (there's no 2026- plan issued as far as I know) https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/northern-ireland-h...
The borders between Scotland, England, and Wales are effectively like state borders in the US. Unless you see a street sign, you wouldn't know you crossed it.
NI is physically on a different island, so requires a boat or plane ride.
And all of the UK (ignoring the territories and ex-colonies) is on islands. And require a valid passport, passing through customs/immigration checks, and either a plane, boat, or train ride.
The three jobs are divided up differently, though still between too few people. You have a Figurehead, the Head of State, which here is King Charles and in the US is Donald Trump. That's the part Trump most likes, you get free gold stuff, you're allowed to do whatever you please, everybody is supposed to suck up to you, hooray. Farage would not get that job.
Next you've got Executive leader. Trump doesn't enjoy this as much. People keep trying to blame him for the fact he's bad at it. He appointed people he saw on TV to run things, how is it his fault they're not brilliant? This would be half of Farage's job as Prime Minister and he likes being asked to account for his incompetence even less than Trump.
Finally Head of the Legislature, in the US this isn't Trump's job, Mike Johnson is in the House and John Thune in the Senate. Farage would get this job in full as the Prime Minister. Even before he resigned he was rarely actually in Westminster, it's boring and you need to be good at actual politics, so of course he's not there, he gets paid more to be somewhere else.
I also don't think Nigel can put together the numbers. Trump has Mike and John to try to make the numbers work, and Farage wouldn't have that. "My way or the highway" is what Farage would say, and that doesn't make the numbers work. That's how you lose a Confidence motion and you're back on your arse in six weeks.
[Edited to correct the Senate leader, mistake pointed out by ragnese below]
So, it's Mike Johnson for the House and John Thune for the Senate.
Trigger me, thought you meant Tony Blair for a minute!
> The target of treating 80% of all known cases has already been met, and deaths from the virus have fallen by 36% in the last decade, just short of what is needed by 2030.
What is needed by 2030? There is no mention prior to this statement.
Later:
> NHS England says that since 2015, more than 100,000 people have been diagnosed and treated for hepatitis C, meaning the country is already meeting that target.
Again, what target are we talking about??
Much later:
> Prof Frankie Swords, NHS national medical director, added: "England is now leading the world in the mission to eliminate this disease and on course to beat the WHO's 2030 target, but we are determined to keep up the momentum and finish the job.
Finally a target!
FUCK AI
> Style Assist helps BBC journalists quickly adapt trusted content into BBC News house style, speeding up the publication of high-quality local stories. It uses a BBC-trained AI model to generate a draft, which is always reviewed and edited by journalists before publication. This helps save time while maintaining accuracy, tone and editorial standards. Find out more in an article from Rhodri Talfan Davies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/policies/what-were...
LDRS articles are made free to everyone in the scheme (including the BBC), but because the content is written primarily for their home news org the articles that end up being published by the BBC need to be modified to comply with the BBC's editorial guidelines and for style reasons.
Hence, Style Assist.
Thanks to RFKjr and friends, we know what country will be one of the last to do so. Or even worse, the US could end up being a reservoir for HepC.
RFK Jr. is an anti-vax crackpot, but Hep C isn't vaccine-preventable. On the other hand, we can absolutely blame RFK Jr. for our rising Hep A, B, and D rates.
What has RFK Jr specifically said for/against HepC?
I do not know why some people think the current US regime will follow England with all evidence pointing to doing the exact opposite.
If it requires a vaccine you can be sure HEP C will be kept alive and well via MAHA in the US
okay here is a much better article
* https://www.england.nhs.uk/2026/08/100000-people-receive-tre...
> "Treatment involves a free course of antiviral tablets lasting 8 to 12 weeks, which cures more than 95% of cases."
must be nice to have a government that actually cares about its citizens health, we're still waiting DECADES for that Republican health care plan (other than "just die quietly")
“Taking antiviral tablets for 8 to 12 weeks can cure more than 95% of cases.”
So indeed diagnosing the cases is leading directly to deaths prevented.
This is not what the title claims. The title claims that hepatitis C is to be eliminated, aka 0%. This is not possible; anyone with a basic 101 virology knows why. BBC lies here via the title.
> Drug users have a range of
The title does not even mention drug users.
The title refers to the hepatitis C virus. That virus existed way before drug users did.
> England is now leading the world in the mission to eliminate this disease and on course to beat the WHO's 2030 target, but we are determined to keep up the momentum and finish the job.
Seems fairly unambiguous to me
I usually think of a country as equal to a nation, and as far as I know, Wales and Scotland have not split off yet? Is the term "country" not actually that sharply defined?
EDIT: Thanks people, I just asked a question to better understand the terminology, you know ...
Guess only England was meant. That would insinuate they don't care about scotland though.
If I read an article from them about crime in London, quoting the Metropolitan Police, I don't immediately think that they don't care about, say, the West Midlands.
The bit that gets me is that people often refer to the UK but actually mean GB or vice versa.
James VI/I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I) was king of _both_ England and Scotland and only later did the Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Union combine the two. You might notice I've neglected Wales which was (considered?) part of England.
In any case, England is a country, yes. Also the UK is a country.
People in the UK would refer to England as a country and most people would actually be confused if you referred to the UK as a country, even though it technically is. People in England don’t really think of the UK as anything other than “the UK”. People from Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have more nuanced takes.
You might get a tedious person saying something like "actually, Wales is a principality".
It's like if you put four boxes in a box, it's not too confusing that the outer box is still a box.
For instance, England and Wales share a legal system, but Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own. There’s bunch of special things about Northern Ireland and its relation to Ireland. And all of the constituent countries have their own parliament / assembly except for England (the parliament in London is for the whole of the UK where MPs for all constituent countries can vote).
In this particular case, the constituent countries have their own health systems, so it’s normally England we would be talking about, not the UK.
If that’s a bit eccentric, well this is the same place that refers to Europe as a different place even though France borders the UK by automobile road.
It is not a sovereign country, but instead is a part of the constituents comprising the UK state.
For example in Germany one would say there are 16 states, but one wouldn't say that there are 16 countries. Never heard anyone claim that. So state seems to be different from country, at least here. Would people in the UK say that Scotland or Wales are "nations"? Or is at least that term very clearly only for units that could participate under a flag in lets say the olympics? (I assume here, that Scotland and Wales are not separately competing, but are under UK flag.)
Team GB enters the Olympics but as you may have noticed it was England who came Third in the World Cup recently, and likewise England play international rugby, including against Wales and Scotland.
As an English person I would say that Scotland and Wales are nations and countries; constituent countries of the country that is the UK.