I remember reading in local newspapers our knowledgeable MP Barry Gardiner warning health chiefs not to close “A&E” at Central Middlesex and Ealing Hospital in haste, until extra beds and other facilities are put in place before carrying out their half-baked controversial “Shaping Healthier Future” plans. How true his words have proved, as NPH now has the longest waiting time in the country. Patients have to spend hours in ambulances whilst paramedics are unable to hand over patients to A&E departments are bursting at the seam.
Attending various “Health Care Meetings”, we are told that changes are put into practice after extensive consultations and approval of the public. Yet we fail to find a single person in favour of closing down A&E departments
While Government has promised to provide 700 beds in Sierra Leone, Hobbesian caring gesture, it could not provide 140 beds needed at NPH, especially with onset of winter, A & E will be inundated with fragile patients, made worse by binge drinking public, as some 70% visitors to A & E on week-ends are drink related cases. It is time government and all political parties stop fooling people with rhetoric, adopt glasnost, put inauspicious overseas aid on slow-burner until they have sorted out our health, social and housing inadequacies.
Kumudini Valambia
By email
