Strikes Plan to Fight Health Cuts

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Don't open this new hospital if you value your community health service. That was the simple message from Evan Luard, Labour MP for Oxford at a Trades Council meeting in the town.

Luard also claimed the massive cuts facing the Oxfordshire Health Service were : "nothing to do with the government" • But the Area Health Authority is facing a simple choice.

It has now completed a new hospital, and can choose between opening it at the expense of the existing service or keeping it closed at the cost of £200,000 a year to maintain the building.

"OVERSPENT"

This £200,000 would have to come out of the present budget, and-regardiess of the new hospital (the John Radclifte, Phase 2)the Area Health Authority expects to be "overspent" by £¾ million by the end of the present financial year.

To cope with the 'overspending' (which is in fact government underfınancing) the Oxfordshire Health Service is preparing cuts on a colossal scale and drastic reductions in its present facilities.

REDUCTION

included in a list or proposed cuts (which. according to the AHA "will not harm patient care"/ are the reduction of diagnostic invert gations: the "avoidance of less essential hospital admissions" (the pressure beds in Oxford is already 50~ higher than the national averager: a S reduction in jobs: a raduation in cut-patient attendantes: and hospital viosures.

The x : 0: 2. 300. includes a reduction in the family planning services; the restriction of abortions to the immediate catchment area; "rationalisation" of the psychiatric service-which means closing some hospitals; and a 10% cut in the school and child health services.

The AHA's final list includes cutting the number of nurses, doctors, medical records and medical secretaries.

TERMINAL PATIENTS

It also recommends that terminal patients (people with incurable diseases who are going to die) should be "discouraged" from staying in hospital if they are likely to take a long time dying.

The above cuts are only a few of the ones proposed and would only "solve" this year's financial problems.

The AHA report says:

*Probably across the board reductions of 10% or so would destroy the NHS as it is at present in Oxfordshire."

But the present proposed cuts alone are more than 10%.

The document containing these proposals was given to the health service unions in Oxford along with another document outlining the cuts needed to find the £1.5 million to open the new John Radcliffe Phase I.

The second document calls for such drastic curs it is difficult to see what upuld be able to continue within the present service in OPPOSITE The unions involved have all responded to the documents-bur the type or response an one c: them was the 00000e 8008: 88=936, police try to clear a way for a fascist car in the tast End.

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ALASTAIR GREEN LOOKS AT THE WAY THE LEFT PHOTO: Andrew Wlard, Repure.

The street fighting of Lewisham and Ladywood has again brought up the struggle against fascism as a topical question. Above all, in the workers' movement, the way in which the organised filth of the National Front and its fascist competitors are to be defeated is hen and now... 1977, police clear route ALASTAIR GREEN GROUPS HAVE TA NATIONAL FRONT