Crisis looms over NHS as cuts bite

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/160010.html


The UK National Health Service (NHS) has plunged into a crisis after trusts slashed more than 3,000 jobs in the past week as part of the coalition government's crackdown on vital services.

Thousands of jobs at the health sector are to be cut to pave the way for the NHS to make some £20 billion "efficiency savings" by 2015, the daily Morning Star reported.

A report by campaign group Health Emergency has revealed that as many as 3,000 jobs have so far been axed by trusts, and King's College hospital in London is the latest to alert staff to impending redundancies.

The confirmed redundancies include 444 at Calderdale and Huddersfield Trust, 1,000 at United Lincolnshire, 350 at Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh, 705 at the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, 350 at Northern Lincolnshire and Goole, and 450 at Coventry and Warwickshire.

Patients Association chief executive Katherine Murphy complained that the "astonishingly brutal" cuts to NHS services go way beyond redundancies.

Meanwhile, the Royal College of Nursing has stressed that cutting NHS jobs will endanger lives as nurses will have less time to care for patients.

"When major London reaching hospitals are talking openly about dire financial prospects and the axing of jobs you know that the NHS is locked into a genuine crisis”, said Health Emergency chairman Geoff Martin.

"Thousands of NHS jobs have already been axed and there is much worse to come”, said Martin.

"This cuts bombshell nails the lie that the NHS has been insulated from the Con-Dem cuts and proves without any doubt that 2011 will be a year of savage attacks on our health-care services", he added.

GMB union national officer for health Sharon Holder accused the government of telling the public one thing and doing another.

"No matter what the government is telling staff about protecting the NHS the reality is that the health service is suffering as a direct result of its so-called 'efficiency savings'," she said.

"Cutting staff will endanger patients and it proves that the NHS is not protected by the government's spending plans after all", added Sharon Holder.