- martinday9
Face up to Responsibility.
Several groups including the British Medical Association have been writing to government ministers, telling them NHS workers fear they could be the target of charges alleging unlawful killing. Why exactly? It comes on the back of the UK’s Chief Medical Officer once again saying the NHS could be overwhelmed. If that phrase hadn’t been used every winter for at least the last decade, people might take more notice of it.
The letters from health organisations point out that the Prime Minister warning in November that an overwhelmed NHS would be a “medical and moral disaster”, in which “doctors and nurses could be forced to choose which patients to treat, who would live and who would die”.
Yet going back to last March and April, things were very different. Beds had been cleared for a rush of patients that never actually occurred. Close on 50,000 beds were empty as anything deemed “routine” or “non-urgent” was cancelled. Fear added to the equation as people were too afraid to go near hospitals.
I, for one, will want to know who gave the order to clear the hospitals? Was it done by consultants on a ward by ward basis? Did the edict come from Trust chief executives worried about their hospital’s ability to cope? Was it the Health Secretary, SAGE, or Boris? Will we ever know? Such incompetence betrays the individual health workers, who are going above and beyond, but are threatened with gagging orders or worse if they speak out. (Millions have been spent on gagging orders.)
What is certain is that between them, they allowed a virus that killed around 80,000 in 2020 to be the cause of death for many more who never even contracted it. ONS figures show an increase in cancer deaths of 20,000 for last year, but the balloon is about to go up this year as all those untreated cases come to their tragic conclusion. And it’s not just cancer, there are coronary cases, strokes, suicides and more. As a diabetic, I haven’t had an HBA1C for over a year. Podiatry is restricted to emergency work only.
But let’s return to that first emptying of the hospitals, where a registrar sent a lady who was in severe pain, and vomiting faeces, home. Was he acting under orders? Do we have the right to charge that Prat Hancock? He would most likely throw the registrar under the proverbial bus anyway. “Just following orders” no longer works as an excuse. For mistakes and errors that have been made, the people culpable need to face up to their responsibilities.
Martin Day – Party Secretary