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News and Comment April 2022

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1 April - Your faltering NHS

The item that affects almost everyone and discussed at last week’s Communities Scrutiny meeting was the Health Service and how will it ever recover from its woeful performance over the past two years. Maybe never if what I hear on radio phone-ins is correct. Is the service really managed by inhuman tyrants?

It was admitted that in Bexley “health checks were suspended while GPs focused on vaccinations for a period of time. Checks on long term conditions were stepped down”; all with no obvious reference to the people who will have suffered as a direct result.

Attendance at Emergency Departments is running at an all time high, more than 1,000 a day at Lewisham and Greenwich, 600 of them to Queen Elizabeth Hospital which makes things “extremely difficult”. Nationally imposed Covid restrictions continue to hamper the provision of local health services and there are very considerable difficulties with staff recruitment made far worse by Sadiq Khanְ’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. (QEH is a short distance inside the boundary.)

A survey is to be conducted to see if the anecdotal evidence that increased attendance at A&E is the result of GPs neglect of their responsibilities is justified.

Despite the Agenda item being titled ‘Local Health Service Recovery Plans’ that subject was not debated, however documentation provided to Councillors spoke of achieving zero delays, making the NHS a great place to work and to be the best employer, meeting national requirements, listening to focus groups and running staff seminars. Notice anything new there? No, me neither.

 

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