14.03.1996

Healthcare SOS

The healthcare crisis has now dug so deep that every day lives are put at risk. So intent is the government on putting private profit and ‘efficiency’ before people’s real needs that even emergency services and intensive care provision have been starved of cash.

Patients up and down the country have been transported hundreds of miles in the search for beds, have been refused admission or forced to wait on trolleys in hospital corridors.

Last week an inquiry reported how a dying boy was turned away from four northern hospitals because none had a paediatric intensive care bed available. After emergency surgery a 68-year old woman was shunted between three hospitals’ intensive care units to make way for even more seriously ill (younger) patients.

So what action does health secretary Stephen Dorrell propose? Another ‘Patient’s charter’ - but not another penny in resources!

The problem is that looking after critically ill patients is a very expensive business in terms of staff and technology. So Dorrell wants more money transferred to the cheaper ‘high dependency units’, which would free up some IC beds.

The Labour Party in opposition finds it very easy to condemn the lack of cash for such priority healthcare, but it too is committed to an overall NHS cost-cutting policy, which is at the root of the emergency care crisis.

Labour and the Tories support the bosses and their capitalist system. Working people know that our health is more important than their profits.