CELEBRITIES have joined a campaign by an-anti privatisation group calling on NHS leaders to do what they can to prevent deaths from the outsourcing of services.

In an open letter to local NHS chairs today, actor Stephen Fry, musician Brian Eno and others express alarm at the findings of a new study in The Lancet, which links the privatisation of NHS services to 557 deaths.

The study suggests the deaths may be a result of “a decline in the quality of healthcare services” when run by for-profit private companies, as compared to when those services are run directly by the NHS.

It comes ahead of the launch of a campaign by We Own It, demanding NHS leaders pledge to reverse privatisation.

We Own It lead campaigner Johnbosco Nwogbo said: “We know that privatisation hurts the NHS and patients because it enables private companies to suck millions of pounds out of the NHS in shareholder profits.

“This is money that should be going towards taking care of people at a time when waiting lists are through the roof.”

Mr Nwogobo said the NHS should be run for the good of people, not to enable large profits to be made by private companies.

He said that not changing course would “reflect an unhealthy obsession with an ideology of privatisation at the expense of people.”

Keep Our NHS Public co-chairman Tony O’Sullivan highlighted the importance of campaigning together to restore and protect the NHS during “such dangerous times under a Tory leadership.”

He said: “Health services in private hands put profits before patients and are either more expensive or less safe or — most damaging of all — both of these: costly, dangerous and inequitable.”