(With a cheque from Kinnock)
Tories head for "flag day"
NHS
By JOHN LISTER WITH many health authorities desperately strapped for cash as a result of rigid Tory cash limits, private charity funding even of basic services is gaining increased prominence.
February saw a major national outcry over the proposed closure of Guy's Hospital heart unit, which was f272.000 overspent after exceeding its quota for operations. A shutdown would have threatened the lives of up to 100 pa. tients on the waiting list.
After appeals to District and Regional health authorities and to the DHSS had failed to produce any extra funding an American millionaire (and supporter of NHS cutbacks) finally dipped into his wallet and made a donation of f272.000 to keep the unit open. The terms of the donation/ however meant operations it financed were conducted outside the NHS: the heart unit itself remains overspent, and may yet have to close for up to four months in the next financial year in order to balance its books - with teartul consequences to heart patients in the London area.
As the surgeon in charge of the Guy's heart unit said: "It is humiliating that charity should be necessary." But the Guy's case is far from unique.
Another embarrassing example is at Northwick Park hospital, equipped in the early 1970s, where cardiac equipment is becoming out and obsolete, with no NHS money available to replace it. The cardiac unit has now turned to the charitable efforts of the Brent and Harrow British Heart Foundation to raise funds for new machines: the unit treats more than 1.500 each year.
And London's Tory evening Standard newspaper - a diehard defender of Fowler's every cut - has been quick to make cheap capital out of promoting a £l million appeal for a body scanner at King's College Hospital. The Standard took up the campaign after a badly in. jured policeman was sent to the private Cromwell hospital for an body-scan. In fact some 350 patients a rear have tor some time been reterred lor body scans from King's to other Lon. don hospitals, NHS and private. Most of them didn't get police escorts to cross London quickly, as were provided for the policeman, but had to endure long
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HOME NEWS
HOME NEWS
Confusion over C2m promise
Hard-pressed health bodies leaves units short of cash may get Aids monitoring rule
Liver transplant Economy drive centre closes puts laboratory to new patients centre at risk
Babies are dying. Heart unit faces closure because hospitals are short of cash
OLIVIA TIMOS examinas the prim findings ol a doctore ourray cant of shan her en indice
Cold spell, cuts and more elderly cases cause beds shortage in Lopdon and Oxford
Hospitals turn away emergency patients
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ON DANGER LIST journeys in rush-hour traffic, and long waits on arrival for the scan. But until a cop was inconvenienced, the Standard
Among the "big names" roped in to tention was reacorganiser Eric
Morley, who sits on Camberwell Health
"Without such an appeal. King's has
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 15
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Too many operations, says health authority as patients 'near death"
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The "Standard" campaign directs atdeliberately from the away question of whether such vital equipment should be provided and funded by the National Health Service, as it is by health services in many other countries.
But many have been drawn - albeit