NHS launches 'diversity week' with transgender art Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said the health service was being hit hard by the demand for efficiency savings and could not afford an expensive week of events. Funding should only be authorised when it could be shown that it would improve care for patients, she said. Ensuring equality and diversity needs to be one of the fundamental elements of the way an NHS trust operates. It shouldn't need a costly and distracting week of events and conferences to ensure that this message is communicated effectively. At least 170 NHS managers working in human resources and leading programmes in equality and diversity are due to attend full-day conferences in London and Manchester. The fee of £199 per place - more than £30,000 in total - is expected to be paid by the NHS trusts which employ them. The events will feature speakers from the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the homosexual rights group Stonewall. Additional costs will be covered by sponsors including trade unions and training organisations. The timeline created by NHS North West highlights "achievements of people from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community, and particularly those who have contributed to health care," from ancient Greece to the present day. They include James Barry, a British Army surgeon who lived as a man but was found to be female upon death in 1865, and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, a 19th-century German "sexologist" said to be the first to speak publicly in defence of homosexuality. NHS Employers, the body organising the first "NHS Equality, Diversity and Human Rights Week," defended its decision to go ahead with the plans at a time of austerity, but was unable to say how much the week's events will cost. Dean Royles, director of the organisation, said: "I'm really proud that equality and diversity is something that employers take very seriously. NHS staff want to work in an environment that is fair, and diverse. And patients want to be treated without fear of discrimination because of their sexuality, gender, race or religion. NHS organisations recognise that there are large personal and cost implications for not getting this right. The organisation said individual NHS bodies across the country had taken their own decisions on how much to spend on their events. The photography collection going on display in Rotherham this week has been touring NHS organisations since last June, after being funded by the Department of Health under the last Government. The timeline, with an accompanying exhibition, was commissioned last year by NHS North West's "equality and diversity team." Since the Coalition came to power in 2010 the NHS has been protected from budget cuts affecting most other Whitehall departments, and has been given rises just above inflation. However, rising pressures from the costs of treating an ageing population mean services have been ordered to make £20 billion of "efficiency savings" by 2015 so extra funds can be released to the front line. In November, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, said the leaders of the health service had a responsibility to taxpayers "to make sure that every pound of NHS money is spent as effectively as possible to deliver the best possible care." The Government has said clinical jobs should not be cut, but last week the Royal College of Nursing claimed more than 5,700 nurses posts had been lost since April 2010. Ministers said they did not recognise the figures, and that the total number working for the NHS had fallen by 450. Last year, an NHS hospital was at the centre of a gaffe when a job advertisement for a senior doctor carried the phrase "usual rubbish about equal opportunities." The advertisement, on a health service website, sought an anaesthetist to fill a one-year post at the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University NHS Trust, Merseyside. Following a complaint, the trust launched an investigation and the wording was replaced with "We are committed to promoting equality and diversity."