Patients die in NHS wreckage

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tempordiy CU 15 LU scarcely anyone otner tnan tory health authorities should the South West Thames RHA proceed full speed ahead with has pointed out that the £100 Thatcher's explicit election pledge that the NHS would be exempt from cuts in public spending was worthless from the start.

Indeed the impact of Tory cash limits and VAT increases on health budgets already cut to inadequate levels by Labour Chancellor Healey has brought further devastation.

And this has been 'compounded by a new call , for a £100M cut in NHS spending nationally.

As Health Secretary Patrick : Jenkin has spelled out the government's insistence that rigid cash limits must be observed in this financial year, a succession of AHAs have opted far ruthlace 'tomniror," ninta en avoid overspending.

Jenkin has declared that cuts, disregarding even their national legal obligation to consult the toothless Community Health Councils at local level.

Nor need health authorities engage in prior discussion with doctors or trade unions, Jenkin has announced, while giving his support to the Nothwest Thames RHA, which is resisting legal moves by the North East District Community Council to force consultation on the "temporary" closure of a 45bed recovery unit.

Little to gain

There would of course be little for health authorities to gain from consulting trade unions and other organisations about cuts SO savage that leaders could agree to them.

Lady Robson, _chairman of Thatcher million "squeeze" on the NHS will mean the doubling and trebling of hospital waiting lists;

the closure of whole hospitals or of at least one ward in each hospital in most districts; and produced by the autumn an NHS that is only able to treat emergency cases.

Women now on two year waiting lists for a hysterectomy will now face waits of up to six years, she said.

Lady Robson admitted that her RHA was reluctant to close hospitals in the current crisis because it would be "almost impossible" ever to reopen them.

The S.W. Thames RHA alone faces an increase from 8 to 15% VAT, soaring fuel costs, a spate of price increases and the burden of meeting last winter's pay increases-all on top of a government target of saving £7 to £8 million.

But in other areas health authorities have grapsed the nettle and announced plans to decimate health cover.

The Kensington Chelsea and Westminster AHA for instance, is proposing a package of cuts including *Closure of all medical, surgical orthopaedic and rheumatology services at St. Mary's Hospital W9—shutting down 244 beds in 9 wards *Closure of the chest and rehabilitation wards at St. Mary's Harrow Road.

*Closure of remaining beds at Paddington Green Children's Hospital *Closure of remaining beds at Chepstow Lodge *Closure of St. Quintins Maternity Clinic and St. Columba's Hospital, Hampstead Heath These and other cutbacks prompted the consultants on the AHA's N.E. District Management Team to declare that the proposals: "would result in a risk to patient mortality, increase morbidity", , and damage to medical education, Meanwhile the nearby Camden and Islington AHA, faced with the prospect of slashing £4.5 million before the end of the financial year, have pressed ahead with the "temporary" closure of the wards at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, whose workin had become a national focus for the struggle against the cuts.

Protest

And even the President of the Royal College of Surgeons has been moved to protest at the plan to shut down the 80-bed City of London Maternity hospital, and the axeing of the casualty department and acute wards at PETITIO EGA Hospital: closure begun Tories the Royal Northern hospital.

Another top doctor, the Professor of Renal Medicine at Guy's Hospital, which falls within the Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham AHA has also taken issue with Tory claims that talk of deaths arising from the cuts is "hysteria"

"It is quite straightforward. If we have a reduction in allocation, we have to stop taking patients on, which means that people will die"

The Area faces drastic cuts as a five-man team appointed by Jenkin takes over the powers of the Lambeth AHA-which voted not to implement the cuts-and set about slashing spending by an immediate £5 million.

Already the 2-ward remnants of St. John's Hospital in Lewisham have been singled out as a target for the axe.

Intensive care

Of course it is not just adults and the elderly that suffer in this latest wave of cuts. The shortage of intensive care provision for new-born babies in London was recently highlighted by the case of one baby that was turned away from nine hospitals before being placed on a ventilator unit in It turns out that 400 babies a year are turned away from overcrowded and inadequate intensive care units.

As one of the Lambeth AHA rebels, Mr. Derek Prentice, has pointed out "We were already maintaining patient care at 1977-8 levels. The levels they [the new management] are going going back to are much further back than that." own cutbacks on housing, which they see as a useful means of forcing workers into the lucrative private market for rented accomodation, or to undertake ruinously expensive mortgages to buy a roof over their heads.

In the Midlands Tory councils are pruning back building programmes totalling £500 millions by nearly 20%-with a £92 million cut.

Council house rents are expected to go up by at least £2 to-£2.50 per week:

While the Tories are merry about dishing out cutbacks and suffering to the working class, they scream blue murder if anyone suggests that they should get a taste of their own policies.

When Sheffield Labour councillors warned that the £3 million cut in government grants would be applied selectively to areas that returned Tory MPs or councillors, the Tory agent rushed to the press bleating that:

"This is absolutely no different to the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis."

The idea that the Tory areas clearly voted for cuts and should therefore receive them as a democratic right clearly had no appeal for them.

But of course as a policy to defend workers against the cuts it has no value either.