The SNP’s stewardship of our country’s healthcare, over the past 15 years, is woeful - and Scotland deserves much more.

The pandemic has exposed rather than caused many of our current challenges. As we emerge from Covid, lessons must be learned, and concrete action taken to ensure the future of our struggling healthcare system.

Because though the NHS is set to come out of an emergency footing tomorrow, our healthcare service remains deep into crisis.

Just take our A&E departments for example – for the last six weeks running, more than three in 10 people have waited longer than four hours to be seen in our A&E departments, with nearly 5,700 people waiting over 12 hours.

Patients who may well be in pain and distress, some of whom will die because of these delays.

This is not the hallmark of a functioning healthcare system.

And the picture is much the same across the entire service.

In place of the flimsy Covid Recovery Plan Humza Yousaf has produced, we need a robust and wide-ranging strategy to restore our NHS, focusing on the choke points and bottle necks in the system.

That means an effective workforce planning strategy, that looks to increase staff in crucial areas such as radiology, as well as focusing on declining GP and nurse numbers.

We need to fix the NHS from the bottom up - fully resourcing our hospitals, clinics and doctors so that if a healthcare emergency like Covid ever occurs again, our health service is better able to cope.

That said, the effects of Covid will be with us for some time to come.

Long Covid, and the huge additional pressures it could put onto our GPs and clinics, is a ticking time bomb. Over 130,000 Scots are now suffering with this debilitating condition.

The SNP should be committing to establishing dedicated Long Covid clinics where Scots can get the treatment and support they need in their local area – and which the Scottish Conservatives called for almost a year ago.

In the wake of the pandemic, we’ve also witnessed a growing mental health crisis that the SNP has failed to tackle.

Then there’s Scotland’s national shame: under the SNP, drug and alcohol related deaths have spiralled out of control. Drug deaths are the highest in Europe on the SNP’s watch. We can’t go on like this.

The Scottish Conservatives have listened to frontline experts and are proposing a Right to Recovery Bill to give those addicted to drugs and alcohol a legal right to the lifesaving treatment they need.

These are examples of how vast improvements can be achieved in our healthcare system. But, they require a Government and a Health Secretary that understands the NHS. Right now, we have neither.

Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP is a GP and health spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives