In her regular column, Nadia Whittome weighs in on the ongoing NHS crisis and its impact on people in Nottingham...
The poet T. S. Elliot famously wrote that the world would end “not with a bang, but with a whimper”. When I think about the crisis unfolding with the NHS, this line always comes to mind.
The collapse of our health service is not a single dramatic event, but thousands of individual tragedies occurring simultaneously. It’s the pensioner waiting in agony for a knee replacement that keeps getting postponed. It’s the young woman whose mental health is so bad she’s forced to go to A&E after struggling to access support for months. It’s those dying in the back of ambulances or on trolleys in hospital corridors because there are no beds.
Almost six million people are waiting for NHS treatment - 300,000 of them for over a year. The number of 999 calls and A&E waiting times are both higher than ever before. Like much of the rest of the country, services in Nottingham are under strain. In November, Nottingham University Hospitals were placed on the highest alert - Opel 4 or “black alert” . This alert is for serious incidents, when the NHS is unable to deliver comprehensive care and patient safety is at risk. The Trust said that “pressure is being felt by staff working in every area of our health and care system”.
Meanwhile, East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) recently called in the military to help ambulance staff transport patients. EMAS said that “less urgent and non-emergency patients [were] waiting longer for an ambulance than they should rightfully expect.”
Throughout the pandemic, NHS staff have kept going selflessly to save lives. But they have paid a heavy price
The current crisis has of course been exacerbated by the pandemic. But even before Covid-19, a decade of underfunding left our NHS struggling to cope. It had become relatively commonplace for hospitals to issue Opel 4 alerts in winter months, for example. Waiting lists for operations and waiting times in A&E had also been growing. Many in Nottingham will remember the story of 88-year-old Jean Woolley, who was on the front page of the Daily Mirror in 2019 after being left on an A&E trolley at the Queen’s Medical Centre for six hours.
Throughout the pandemic, NHS staff have kept going selflessly to save lives. But they have paid a heavy price: burn-out, long COVID and PTSD are just some of the side-effects. Over 1,500 health and social care staff have lost their lives to COVID - many more will have passed the virus onto family members at home who later died. At the same time, many have been struggling to make ends meet on pay that is criminally low. It is no wonder that the latest figures released show more NHS staff leaving than ever before.
The fact that we have universal healthcare should never be taken for granted
The Government’s response is completely inadequate. Instead of giving them the pay rise they deserve - which would tackle poverty pay and aid retention and recruitment - NHS staff are getting a real-terms pay cut. With the Health and Social Care Bill, the Government is embarking on a huge restructuring exercise, while handing more power to the Health Secretary and giving private companies a seat at the decision-making table. This is the last thing the NHS needs right now and will do nothing to tackle the emergency we face.
The Prime Minister boasts constantly of the money that is being put into the NHS. However, experts have warned that after a decade of cuts and intense pressure, there is a serious risk that the funding will not be enough. It is also being raised through the Health and Social Care Levy - a rise in National Insurance contributions that hits low paid workers the hardest.
We need to get real about the scale of problems facing our NHS. The fact that we have universal healthcare, free at the point of use and accountable to the public should never be taken for granted. We have to fight for a publicly-provided NHS, publicly-funded through progressive taxation, with the resources to provide the best quality of care for decades to come.
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