It’s clear that our NHS is in crisis.
A crisis of funding.
A crisis of leadership.
There are currently 18,000 people on trolleys waiting for emergency care. Four in ten A and E departments are operating at dangerous levels. Delayed discharges have reached a record high of 200,000. As a country we are spending 30% less per person than the Germans do. Plus we have fewer GPs per head of population than most other European countries.
The problems go on, in a recent report one cancer specialist at a trust said: “I have never seen so many cancer operations cancelled.” Can you imagine the distress of that situation and the potential impact for both the individual, their families and the health professionals?
Common sense and common decency are also flying out of the window. A doctor at the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said it had decided not to declare an internal emergency because its bosses did not want bad publicity. Things are so stretched there that she had seen a patient with urinary problems being given a bed bath in the middle of a corridor, with just a plastic sheet to shield her from the rest of the ward.
What a shambles! Why try to hide the truth when it’s becoming so blatant.
The public have an absolute right to know.
There is further misery for 1 million older people stuck without any social care. Because not only is health care failing, social care is now in crisis.
The Government are barely acknowledging this sickening situation. The answer they say, is for councils to deal with social care bills by raising precepts. But local authority budgets have been deeply cut and are being cut again. The idea of passing these costs on to an already hard pressed cash strapped general public is an absurd and an abysmal solution.
The NHS needs £700,000 million now. If we can buy banks and quantitatively ease financial institutions then we can do this.
No ifs – not buts. Mrs May needs to deal with this crisis.